Miriam makes me shiver

[bvanevery]

Still same turn.  I think I went the wrong way with the Tectonic Missiles before.  My bridging was "neat" but it's not actually possible to get through the Pirates peacefully.  I think I need to go to the west of the Usurpers, through a lot of open ocean, and completely around the Cultists so they are not summarily killed.  If the land alone doesn't bring the 2 Aliens into fighting range, perhaps some rails will.  I think part of this project is still in range of my Missile Sub, so now I launch some more.  2 missiles later I've started the project, but clearly it's going to take a lot more missiles.

I'm out of range now, so more missiles do have to wait until next turn.  I've only got 1 "finished" base in the region that would do a good job of resupplying missiles, without me having to undergo lots of tedious mouseclicks.  That would be The Manifold Nexus.  So, I will try walking 1 missile per turn from there, including the 3 missiles I have left to launch from my sub.

My original route seemed like it would be so close to working, that I'm not quite willing to give it up.  I've deployed my Drop Formers to fill in a body of water at the western edge of Caretaker territory.  It's going to be an interesting test of Singularity Time Stasis durability, putting these Formers right next to Caretaker bases like that.  I'm realizing that Drop Formers have a serious mouseclick advantage, in that I don't have to push them across the map when deploying them.  So this project might end up being more "raising and rails" than earthquakes.  We'll see.

I also dropped a probe team 2 squares away from the Caretaker city with The Human Genome Project.  That's another test of whether they can react.  If they can't, it's mine next turn.  The Empath Guild is in their capitol, so I'd have to actually take it from them.  Which I jolly well might.  I can't really vote myself to victory if I leave the Aliens alive, but there's something about having all those votes...

[Buster's Uncle]

Tectonic and Fungal Missiles upset Planet pretty badly, eco-damagewise...

[bvanevery]

Fungal missiles do??  Why would they?  Not that I've used more than 1 the whole game, as a test.

I do seem to have developed some substantial eco-damage in various cities.  Hopefully I can compensate with more Centauri Preserves and Temples of Planet in cities that don't have them yet.  I can't tell if the damage is from Tectonic Missiles, or from the cities just getting bigger every turn.

My path around the Cultist peninsula is not subtle.

Elsewhere, Marr destroyed an awful lot of his planes trying to take out a stack of 4 Singularity Stasis Drop Formers.  He failed, but he badly wounded them, to the point of taking them offline in some fungus for a bit.  If one of his planes would leave, I could heal at a Monolith.

[bvanevery]

Why did H'minee leave me a walk-in to her capitol?  Fine, I'll take it.  Don't see me arguing.  The Empath Guild is mine.  I don't think I'll make peace just yet because I want to raise some land.

The Believers decided to talk to me.  We signed a Truce.  I'm still starving her sea bases though.  I keep offering people money for Treaties, and considering how rich I am, you'd think they might bite on it.  Nope.  So they can starve.

I've put a drop probe team near a Spartan base I'd like to take over, but I've realized I still need to be at war with them to make my path.

[bvanevery]

I find that I'm not interested in trying to get the Caretakers and the Usurpers to fight anymore.  It's a huge project, and it's not likely to work anyways.  For the amount of mouseclicks I've expended so far, I probably could have wiped at least the Caretakers out.  Trying to make all these paths was interesting for awhile, but I've been at it a long time, putting all kinds of stuff across the oceans.  Ultimately to no purpose: I have linked islands that I will never inhabit and never defend.  Nor do I think anyone else is going to get around to colonizing them, before I'm tired of this game and want it to end.

Fatigue!

I have shifted my production to satellites.  I'm going to corner the energy market and call this game over.  I'm 25k away from achieving that, which I might make in as few as 4 turns.

The moral of this story is I need something for my Formers to do, other than twiddle around in the ocean.

A secondary moral is once I've got Hab Domes, I'm not going to build any more cities.  There's no reason to.  I don't really need centralization around my capitol when I've made enough gold to make bricks fly.

A third moral is the starvation strategy is kinda slow.  Also I'm not sure if submarine transports interfere with tile harvesting.  I coulda sworn I used a transport earlier to rob the enemy of his tiles, but it wasn't a submarine.  I'm bringing over the "believed good" transport to the sea base I'm having trouble with, to see if it makes a difference.

Everything is kinda slow now actually.  Screen scrolling is slow.  Unit movement is slow.  The poor old game may be having to think about too much.

I also made too much peace for my land connection project.  The Cultists, for instance, are interfering with my big Tectonic Missile path.  I can't both stay at peace with them, and avoid touching their land, using missiles.  The whole point of this causeway is to go around the Cultists and not involve them in any Alien fighting.  I've had to bring in more precise Formers to get past the boundary difficulty.

I'm also not sure that Tectonic Missiles save any overall work.  Whatever I save in time spent raising land, seems to be lost futzing around with Planet getting unhappy and causing eco-damage.  I did get a Global Warming warning recently.  The Council did vote to launch a Solar Shade.  But if I keep using the missiles every turn, I bet that's not enough.

[bvanevery]

You know what?  I don't even care.  Obviously I won the game eons ago and am just fooling around.  I quit.  Not even going to bother with another screenshot.

Seem like a lame way to end one of the longest AARs?  Well maybe there's a reason for that.  The game became lame.  I think there will be a next time, and I will think about how to not make it lame.  I mean really, I cannot be arsed to push ONE.. MORE.. FORMER.. AROUND!

Make it stop!

Instead of the Threshold of Transcencence I reached The Threshold of Boredom.

[bvanevery]

EPILOGUE:

I won this game.  I didn't go though the formal exercise of declaring a victory, which I could have done at any time since forever.  I toyed with my enemies, "sandboxing" them.  But eventually that wasn't amusing anymore, and I could no longer lift a finger to move... one... more... piece.  I wonder what it would take to bring a game like that to an actual satisfying fruition?  It eluded me here.