AAR: Eco-Terrorism?

[Eadee]

Lets take a look at the believers map:

Hey nice. Yangs escape pod did make it too. He still owes me my lawn mower! Also the University of Planet isn't showed as mightiest AI-Faction anymore. Miriam is, I really hope she has no pact with Yang, otherwise we might get a really hard time soon.

More Diplomacy:

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I really need that lawn mower:

Its worth way more than 25EC anyways.

So now lets talk to Yang:

Nice! That way the Believers and the Hive will keep each other busy. I just don't want to get involved to much, so... you're on your own Yang. However I gave Miriam a bunch of techs, and she is more powerfull than Yang already... so we might want to even the field.

I suggest a tech trade to the Hive:

Man that sounds great. I don't care much for the perimeter defenses as I hope we get the Citizens Force Defense at some point... but being able to run Police State would be awesome. DEAL.

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Next Trade:

Yeah take that stupid artillery tech. I'd love to get a 3 defense armor.

Final Trade:

Okay, know what? Give me that map. I'll even give the Networks to you, I don't think you're stupid enough to give this tech to Miriam, especially if you're at war with her already.

The Hive's Map:

Okay, the field seems to be almost evened between Hive and Believers, with a litte advantage for Miriam, but she's at war with Zakharov too, so it should be allright.

The Map of Planet year 2150:

I see 5 of 7 factions all on the southern hemisphere of Planet. This should mean that Morgan and Lal have plenty of space to expand. But since the do not show up as powerfull factions I have to believe they're either at war against each other or are cuddling mindworms all the time. I'm curious what its up there and I'm more eager to get Doctrine Flexibility that ever since there should be plenty of free land in the north.

[Eadee]

Finally its reasonable to attack that laser-squad:

We got Lasers, they got Synthmetal-Armor. But we get the atackerbonus. The odds the game showed were 35:32 or something like that. I still don't know how to read these odds sine a 2:1 is almost a certain win and not a 1/3 chance to loose. So if someone can enlighten me I'd be very happy about that.

Now lets get rid of that colonypod:

Killing that pod will hurt him a lot, even though I think Miriam would've done it a turn later if we spared the pod now.

Return to base:

While our former improves those nutrient ressources our troops return. I set Song of Planet as their new homebase (ctrl+h) because Nessus Shining is loosing minerals for supporting many units while Song of Planet still has two free support slots.

[Eadee]

Former finished at Lily of the Valley:

We instantly make use of that energy ressource and continue with a network node since it'll be soon our 2 in 1 Building.

And since we have some spare EC:

We can now hurry those tanks at Song of Planet to boost the base in the contested area.

Oh wait, I have to make a break here, phone call.

Nevermind, its Yang, I'll include that call:

I just hope he doesn't want to borrow my spade as well.

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So he wants a pact:

Okay, I don't have a screenshot here, but you have to believe me, I'm pretty sure I saw Yang is tech-leader right now. So if we pact with him, we might get a nice tech or two. I'll accept since 25 EC are nice and there's no way we would prosper in peace with Miriam for long anyways.

Sadly he doesn't want anything we have, I asked he should name a price.
So lets end this conversation. And give him that spade already, he really needs it to burrow Miriams grave.

Scout Patrol is nice:

But if we design a prototype in the workshop...:

... then we still lack the money to upgrade that scout patrol -.- nevermind.

On the central island:

Our scout defense finished and we continue with the Network Node for reasons you should know by now.

On our home island:

We can now hurry those tanks as well since we got enough bucks from Yang. Meanwhile our former is on fungus-removal-duty to plant another forest and build those roads we need.

[Eadee]

Next Turn, next Tech:

I don't think we need Free Market or Energy Banks soon. But the bonus money from Pacts might be helpful.

Changes in production:

Virgin Soil finished its Network Node and builds another Former. The Flowers Preach finished their tanks and will now continue with the node as usual.

Between Turns:

Mindworms appear! Finally after 54 turns of playing Gaians we encounter our first native lifeforms (am I doing it wrong?).
I always like Mindworms, i mean, either you get a free unit or you get free EC, where's the catch?

Oh, there it is, nevermind then.

[Eadee]

So there was one Unitypod left at the central island:

With a lot of EC and an energy ressource on top of it.  would like it. I do too, since we might want to hurry stuff soon.

First Probe Team:

I forgot to mention it earlier, but there is an image where you can see we were building a probe team. Its supposed to do two things. First of all exploit Zakharovs weakness and steal some tech. Second (and that might be even more important to me on a personal level) to rub Miriam in that she has no probes while we do 
Well, now its on its way, while the Former finished a farm on the nutrient ressource and Nessus Shining builds its Network Node.

Santiago calling, gotta take that call:

Diplomacy:

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She wants to talk to Yang:

Oh, he still has your hedge trimmer? Sure, here's his number. Good Luck! I'll take these 30 EC to buy me a new lawn mower.

Spartan Pride:

Okay those Rovers are pretty impressive. Do they drive on top of the oceans ground? Then how are they supposed to threat me anyways? I don't see any indication you even got a single foil.

Aggression:

She seems to be really upset right now. Usually I won't give her any tech because she doesn't seem to be a threat at all. But since Polymorphic Software is such a stupid tech (in my oppinion) I just take the chance to soothe her a little with some artillery-tech.

Scouting complete:

Now we have a complete map of our central island. Its nice and has place for about two other bases. Remember me to build more colonypods, we should've never stopped expanding anyways!

[Eadee]

Third Former finished:

That may be sufficient for this small island (usually I build one former per base, no matter what). Virgin Soil now will work on the Weather Paradigm. The terraforming rate isn't as important. But we really want the ability to build Condensers and Echolon-mirrors as well as Boreholes asap. And on this map the "raise terrain" terraforming action might be a real jackpott. The weather paradigm will grant us all of those possibilities so here we go!

Just when our Probe wanted to have some fun:

He does look like a call agent, right? Tell me its not only me. So lets take that call and then send our Agent.
Diplomacy:

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Well, if you had been that funny at our prom I'd've never ditched you in the first place Z. Seriously 

Probe Team! Do your thing!

We steal tech because the chances that Z has a lot of EC lying around is quite bad, and since we won't attack soon we won't need any sabotage yet.

Success! And our Probe Team even survived.

Here's what we got:

Thats uhm.... something. meh... the resonance armor would be nice against psi-attacks, but since there seems almost no native life on this map we could just go with our Plasma Steel. Well, it gets us further up in the tech tree... thats something.

Overview of Gaian Territory in Year 2160

I get the feeling Miriam is getting a bit out of hand. We should do something about her hair. Erm... I mean about her, but both is a priotity in the end. Maybe we should take these EC and switch to police state now so we can spam troops at her while we expand at the central island. If she gets Flexibility before us and teams up with Santiago that might be scary.
I'm curious what will happen.

[Eadee]

Network Node finished:

Since we'll need more than one unit to defend four bases in the long run, we start on the Plasma-Sentinel prototype. Meanwhile our Former gets rid of that Fungus, we can't risk spawning mindworms on such a small island.

Hey Zakharov...:

...our Probe Team left something in your labs when they visited last time. Would you mind if they stop by and get it?

Lets see:

Well, thats sad, we probably should leave him alone for a while. Maybe he comes up with a new burger-recipe we can steal soon.

Yupp, he doesn't even have a second base, I almost feel bad for him. But he seems to control the manifold Nexus, what means he could capture mindworms any turn since this Landmark grants +1PLANET in social engineering.

But there's even more to see:

Looks like the University scoutet for us where we could put our next base. We'll move our Scout Patrol there to guard the tile we want to settle on.

Don't forget to build that Colonypod, otherwise our scout will wait forever. Man, expanding feels good, should've never stopped this (is it me or do I sound like an addict?).

Lots of things happening:

While we move to the Believers base because the University isn't that fast on burger-recipes, the University seems to send a Probe-Team to OUR base. And I have the feeling they won't just stop by to say hello. Nessus Shining begins to work on another defensive Unit since Miriam is getting dangerous. and Dreams of Green is working on our second colonypod so we can claim the whole central island as our own.

Things are getting serious:

Can't believe I'm doing this, but she IS the most dominant AI, so it's reasonable to assume she might have a tech we do not.

YES! I mean NO! I mean BOTH!
Its great we get Doctrine Flexibility, we really need it. But this means Miriam already has it, she might already load her first ships to attack our bad defended home island. But its not very likely she built a navy since she has enough land borders with enemies, so no need to worry too much.

Well, they did their best. Infiltrating the Believers is never fun, but they did it. They had success and maybe saved us all from an impending naval invasion. Good work, you will be remembered.

But I also remember another Probe Team:

The risk of leaving our base one turn undefended is much smaller then what the University might do to our base. So we commence the attack and whipe out those filthy spies.

[Eadee]

Year 2168:

Nessus Shining finished its Plasmasteel Sentinel and builds another colonypod. Song of Planet finished its pod a second ago and builds Recreation Commons. Since it grows faster than most of our cities it'll have to cope with more drones so we need the commons even though we're close to the border.
Meanwhile Miriam is almost as powerfull as we are. I'm afraid things are getting ugly soon.

Moooore Bases:

Annother Colonypod finished, what do we build next? Correct! Another one. Its impressive what our once cursed pod accomplished so far. The spot shown will be our next base because it gets all three special ressources, what I find is pretty neat.

The Forests expanded:

So our Formers move on and build that last road towards The Flowers Preach. Wich is THE base where we build our first Laser Skimship. I honestly can't wait to get my hands on some more unity-pods!

Greenhouse Gate:

As usual we immediatly buy the Recycling Tanks to give this base a nice boost. You can also see the Former working on a mine for Song of Planet.

Finished Plasmasteel Sentinels:

And we go for a Skimship Probe. Either we use it to spy against Sparta or against this Believer-threat. They're as powerfull as we are now. :/

We have to stop this now:

This is the enemy, and we will go to war soon. As soon as Nessus Shining builds its colonypod we'd better focus on Military units. We might need better weapons though. But I see a chance to coast-bombard / coast-probe their HQ wich might be helpful.

[Eadee]

Shiny Happy People:

Our first Drone Riots! it took a while but sadly the Weather Paradigm suffers from these Riots so we have to end them now, no time to wait for the Virtual World to take care of this.

Since we don't want this Base to grow even more until wie managed our drone problem, we take a worker off of the food production. This way the base won't grow anytime soon and all citizens are happy for now.

War Preparations:

Song of Planet just finished its recreation commons. If we had better weapons we would build military units now. But our lasers won't impress Miriam in any ways, so we go for a probe team for now. Nessus Shining finished its colonypod and builds its commons. Our Former finished the road at the mine (if you have no road at a tile with a mine you mine one mineral less) and continues with a farm to max out the tile for now. The colonypod is on its way through the woods wich just happened to expand on their own again.

[Eadee]

That was close:

So Miriam didn't manage to capture Zakharov, that is good news (I think). However I had no idea this still happens so "late" in the game.

Social Engineering I:

You can see a Sealurk that appeared near our base. Sadly those DO attack coastal cities. However it reminds me that we need a stronger military, so we're switching to Police State now to be able to handle 4 Units per base. We will switch from Planned to Simple to avoid inefficiency, but we will wait another turn before we do that because switching two SE-choices in one turn is far more expensive than switching them one by one.

Foil finished:

Now I really didn't think about it, but YES! Thats the reason to play Gaian. Free military units!

Founding of Autumn Grove:

The usual Insta-Tanks, nothing to see here.

Another popup:

To bad, I think we might want to build the HGP as well since it gives Protection from the prometeus-virus. But other projects have priority, Morgan is still weak, so we might catch up to him on this.

[Eadee]

Here's the awesome thing:

Usually I won't open a unity-pod with the last movement of a naval unit, since Isles of deep are pretty damn often in those things. BUT if I remember correctly, all native lifeforms do not attack other native lifeforms, even if they belong to a faction. So if our lurk triggers an isle of deep, the isle won't attack so we can be the agressor next turn wich gives a huge bonus in PSI-combat.

Lets see whats in there:

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Man, as I foretold another native lifeform xD . Man we really got lucky here!

Lurking around we find another one:

Lets open that next unitypod as well:

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Thats quite nice, this pod just payed for our changes in Social Engineering. Not the best outcome, but MUCH better than lets say... sonar data.

[Eadee]

Social Engineering:

Now we switch back to simple economics, we just want the money and the research more than the growth at the moment.

Before I end this part I want to see if we could get some better weapons from Yang, we really need them against Miriam, and since Yang is our Pactbrother he probably will give us a tech if he has one.
Diplomacy:

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Hey, he just offered it by himself! Nice, no reason to ask myself. Deal!

Okay, usually I don't tend to lend money to other factions, since they ALWAYS betray you before you get any profit out of it. But in this case, every EC I give to Yang will work against Miriam, what is what I really want. So deal.
And, since you intend to return those EC... how about that lawn mower?

Now we have the Tech to start an offensive:

Song of Planet immediatly changes production to Impact Rover. Autumn Grove works on a Former. Our Probes prepare the attack. And our Navy is on its way south to spread terror in new Jerusalem!

[Eadee]

Incoming Transmission:

Okay, I'm tired of  tell her I'll call back... sometime... maybe.
Diplomacy:

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I said NO! 

Newsflash:

Okay, she seems mad I didn't answer her call, maybe she's trying to get my loan mower back for me, so we can be friends?
Well I doubt it, so we still need to do something against her.

Get her units:

Well, we lack the EC to do that. So, nevermind, we'll find another target.

SUDDENLY! AN ARTIFACT:

Now I'm seriously confused. Where the... where does this come from? Is the save corrupted? Did I forget about an Artifact since the last play? PLEASE, IF SOMEBODY HAS AN IDEA WHERE THIS ARTIFACT COMES FROM... TELL ME!

Enough yellin I'll just use it... there's surely an explanation:

And we get:

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Wow... it gave us... well... nothing but a blurb text. I thought I would feel bad in the case this artifact indeed appeared because of a corrupted savegame... now I think "meh".

Next I'm gonna open these two Unity-Pods:

And here's what we got:

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OMG FARMS!!! WE WON THE GAME! KELP FARMS ARE OP! WEEE! </irony> I think I have to repeat myself: "meh"
Next one:

Uh okay, good we didn't get this one with our Foil, otherwise we would be attacked by this Isle of deep.

Wait what? why did it attack? native lifeforms do not attack other native lifeforms... do they? I'm confused again... does this rule only apply to mindworms? Or have I been just a really lucky guy that they never attacked my Mindworms? Man, if someone can help me out here that'd be awesome.

They're injured, so its time to strike back:

Nice! I didn't think It'd work but here we have an isle of deep and two mindworm boils under our control.

[Eadee]

Back at home:

Laser Skimship completed. Changing to Impact-Skimship prototype. Meanwhile the Road to The Flowers Preach is almost done and Miriam has become the most powerful person on Planet. We only top her in tech and Morgan in wealth. God I hate mondays... its monday, don't listen to the others.

At the Front:

The Navy is on its way as well as our spies. Our Former builds another Forest, not only for the ressources, also to slow down Believer-Rovers (thats the reason why we won't be building a road here).

Discovery:

Well, Hypnotic trance is a nice ability for our Police-units. But we won't go Fundamentalism so Secrets of the Human Brain is just....

omg... really? How? This must be a joke.  Okay we just discovered Secrets of the Human Brain as the first faction of all... and we didn't even try! I never thought this would work but... lets see what our free tech is:

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Ethical Calculus is just awesome. We get closer to Gene Splicing (wich will allow us to get 3+ Nutrients per square) and it gives us children's Chreches. So we can improve our growth again without going Planned (wich would hurt our energy income). Democracy is just no option, we need the free minerals in new bases and we really want four supported units per base if we go to war Democracy would not only have a -2 penalty on Support itself, it would also force us to abandon Police-state wich gives us a +2 bonus to Support. That would lead to only one Unit per base supported (meaning we lose minerals if we "just" want to have one defensive unit and one former per base) AND we wouldn't get any free minerals in new bases, which would make insta-tanks impossible to pay for.

Setup our new base:

Last Rose of Summer gets founded. Insta-Tanks as always and you can see our former, working on a mine for The Flowers Preach. This base is going to build a lot of ships now, so more minerals come in handy.

[Eadee]

Our Probe is ready:

I know we are tech leader, and Miriam is probably not having any tech we want. Also Morgan is Wealth leader, I think Miriam wastes all her money on military units, so stealing tech or money would probably be a waste. This base doesn't even have a perimeter defense (we can tell that from the base-graphics) so sabotage wouldn't help much either.
So I choose to do something I rarely do. Infiltrate their Datalinks to see if they have any allies I have to deal with.

Probe-Report:

Okay, she does have some money... maybe we should've stolen some EC instead. However, we see that Santiago is her PACT SISTER! Omg we have to change that somehow. She doesn't seem to know anyone besides Yang, Santiago and Us, so I think no other faction should interfere on her side. Also the List of Techs tells us that it was a good idea not to steal any research data, we would've gotten a pretty crappy map-update.

PSI-Bombardment:

I bombarded once with the laser-skimship, but it did NOTHING. Now its time to find out how awesome Sealurks are:

That'd be pretty awesome. The lurk almost died, but it got a Lifecycle upgrade and it defeated the last defender in that base. To bad that there's another one just one move away.

Before ending the turn we change our priorities to build:

This way we get a better chance for getting Gene Splicing soon. Also our Colonypod on the central island finished, its now on his way to build the last base here and Dreams of Green is going for a Childrens Creche so it can grow faster.