Cha Dawn braves the unknown

[Geo]

Probe teams in 11 years, with luck.

Something I never tried: can an Ogre be bribed by a probe team?

[bvanevery]

I assume so.  It's just a unit, nothing special.  But I didn't have any probe teams to do that with.  I can't remember if I've ever done Roze vs. an Alien at the beginning of the game and bought the Ogre.  Maybe.

I researched Centauri Empathy and went Green.  As I had The Citizen's Defense Force in progress, I switched to The Empath Guild and immediately completed it.  This saves me the trouble of infiltrating 4 other factions.  Roze, Yang, and Zhakarov are quite far away, and that would have taken a long time.  I was about to infiltrate Marr but now I don't need to.  Instead I will carefully scrutinize my approach options with the new intelligence and then steal from him.  I already stole from Tusk and Claw and got Plasma armor for the trouble.

Using my Empathic knowledge of other faction techs, I realized Zhakarov had Adaptive Doctrine.  I traded him Gene Splicing for it.  Roze has got Adaptive Economics but of course isn't going to trade it.  Otherwise I need to steal Synthetic Fossil Fuels and Field Modulation from Marr.

I shall make a Trance 3-Pulse Hoverboat, with only handguns, to prototype the armor.  Somehow in all this time, I forgot to make any military units to stir up Isles of the Deep.  Well to be honest I have a lot of colonization pressure, trying to get to the Jungle.  I'm not going to go Police State along with Green because I actually need the +2 Efficiency.  I'm halfway across my lands now, about to settle next to the sinister Monolith.

I can't hold an election until 4 turns from now.  When I do, I should win easily.  I have way more votes now than anyone else, and Yang is still my ally.  Santiago ditched me, but I'm at peace with everyone except Marr.  That's the other reason I didn't declare my Politics: it will piss off either Roze or Yang.  I'd prefer to keep both non-pissed at me for a time yet.  I'm definitely not ready to go Democratic, as I have a lot of cities to settle and I want the free minerals on settlement.

In addition to the Monsoon Jungle, there's the Uranium Flats to colonize as well, just north of me.  It's actually closer to my capitol than the Jungle, but separated by water.  Although, I will probably move my capitol once I get the Jungle settled, so I should probably regard the Flats as a secondary priority.

[bvanevery]

This is weird.  Marr has an outpost of 3 bases very far to the north of his capitol.  Maybe he put a colonist on a slow transport at the very beginning of the game?  He completely missed the Monsoon Jungle, which he did become aware of at some point.  What possessed him to settle on this seemingly piece of crap land up here?  I need to steal his map to find out.  Unless I've actually got his map already, that I bought from Zhakarov awhile back.  In which case he looks like a moron.

I didn't notice this cluster of bases earlier.  The skimship probe team in the area, was just on "exploration duty" twiddling his thumbs after I built The Empath Guild.  The original mission was to infiltrate the Data Angels or the Hive.  Well, I seem to be in the right place for a map theft.  I just stole his 2 techs this very turn, so nothing's in the way of it.

Except the probe team sitting in that port city.  Grr.  I'll try sailing around to the other side, north and counterclockwise.  Glad I checked for the probe team.  I really hate it when I run up to some base and get killed.

Eventually I did come around the side of the island.  There was another city there.  I stole Marr's map, and this island is exactly as lame as it first looked.  I guess if I need to steal more techs from him, I'll come up here sometime.

[bvanevery]

The Spartans declare war on me.  Maybe they think I'm weak.  In some ways they'd be right, except that they planned their offensive against me rather badly.  She put one of her impact skimships right next to my probe team without destroying it.  That's actually how she declared war.  So next turn, I subverted her ship.  I happened to have that lightly armed "Isle of the Deep stirring" ship in the area, so now I have a task force that can take a base.  If she thought I was weak for still having Scouts in some cities, well she's got that problem too.  Fleet Anchorage is defended by only Scout and it's about to finish building an Aquafarm.  So I think in 2 more turns it's mine, and there's not a darned thing she can do about it.  Unless she's got backup ships at sea, and I doubt it.

She did sink one of my Transports farther south.  That ship took wounds doing it, so is not a major threat anymore.  She's going to try to shell one of my cities with another ship, but I have an artillery piece on the other side of the channel.  Once that weakens her, I'll come out with my own Impact Skimship and destroy her. 

I think I'll just take her base and try to make her go back to peace again.  I don't gain anything by invading Sparta right now.  I've got lands to settle and SPs to build.

Yang ditched me as an ally awhile back, so I don't have anyone else to call up for a war with Sparta.  I'm the only one she's warring with.

[bvanevery]

Well SOB she had a backup ship.  She killed the Impact Skimship I stole from her.  But she's not going to like what I do next, because I brought along that better armored pea shooter unit and put them all in a stack.  She didn't harm my skimship probe team in any way at all, so guess what's happening now?  I've got 295 credits in the bank and I don't remember it costing more than 180 last time.

Well SOB this one costs 600 to subvert.  She's gone Fundamentalist, maybe last turn.  Fine, I'll steal her map and shell her base.  In her wounded state, I actually have a better chance ship-to-ship if she attacks me.  I could flee but it's possible I might take this base.  Her Scout is already badly wounded from the previous shelling I gave it.  Worst case I can tie her up and be a PITA for a few turns yet.  She'll get wounded even if she destroys me, and I don't need this ship.

Her map doesn't reveal much more than I already knew.  Some areas north of her at the end of the map, that's all.

To the south, I picked up an Artifact in the water.  Now I have the burden of getting it home safely.

The AI was sensible enough to put its wounded ship into port with the wounded Scout.  So now I'm shelling Admiralty Base, which also only has a Scout.  She's changed production there from an Aquafarm to an Impact Skimship.  So I'll get that in my face next turn, probably.

Zhakarov has started working on The Citizen's Defense Force.  That's annoying.  I only just re-began that myself.  Even though his base has lower minerals than mine, it says it'll take him 30 turns and me 35.  I guess that's my -1 Industry penalty.  I can remove 1 minerals worth of unnecessary support to speed things up.  Or Santiago will remove it for me, as that's my ship out fighting them.

I suppose a bigger worry is if Roze gets a free tech from us both having it.  However I don't see how she could have infiltrated either one of us.

OMG!  That reminds me I've totally forgotten to vote myself Governor.  Got interrupted with dinner or something.  Hmm, not having allies, I don't know if I'm going to win this.  Well, gonna try anyways.  Fortunately, everyone else abstained.  I'm da guv!  9 years later than I could have been, but whatever.

Sunspots set in the very next turn.  That would have really annoyed me if I had forgotten to elect myself, and then had to live with it for another 20 years.

Sadly,  my ship was killed without doing much harm.  So I'll be at "coastal war" with Santiago for awhile.  Couldn't knock her out early.

[bvanevery]

Marr attacks a poorly guarded southern city unexpectedly.  One that I never got a road down to.  I wounded him with some artillery, but not enough to prevent him from taking the base.

Examining Marr's current tech level, he's researched Doctrine:Air Power and Superconductor.

To be honest, I don't like this game and am quitting.  I've found a lot of this to be extremely tedious.  I think part of the problem is I've been seduced by the percieved necessity to colonize the Monsoon Jungle.  It is not actually all that useful.  Especially, it has stretched me out and kept me from garrisoning anything properly.  I feel like I've had poor productivity this whole game.

This is probably stemming from poor growth from going Green earlier.  I've had that happen with Aki Zeta-5 many times, but with her I know how to compensate.  Just go Planned, and don't even think about Green with her.  With Cha Dawn a solution is not so obvious.  In this stage of the game, I still need to settle and make wars.  I cannot afford Democracy right now.  Well I guess I've learned the annoying way that I can't really afford to be Green either.  The tech was useful for getting The Empath Guild but I shouldn't have gone Green.

Yes I could recover from this umbrage.  But why bother?  I don't like how my empire is laid out or garrisoned and it feels like a big waste of mouseclicks.  This hasn't felt like an effective empire, despite my leading status on the board.  It has felt like stagnant / doing poorly.

Objectively, since 2 other factions have the same power as myself, and a 3rd is nearly so, my feeling is probably correct.  Later for this.  Continuing with such games, and especially such narratives, is time intensive and I could do better.

I'm beginning to get annoyed at doing poorly 2 games in a row.  What is up with that?  In Zhakarov's case, partly it was boredom.  I didn't want to play him the way I knew he needed to be played.  I paid the price for that.  I don't like games where the environment constrains me to only do X.

In this game, I shouldn't have gone Green, and I'm not used to the slowness at which Cha Dawn produces things.  It makes SPs sluggish.  I let a lot of SPs go by, that I feel I should have secured more of.  I had the techs, but not the ability to make good on them.

I also think the lack of action from Marr for such a long time, lulled me into a false sense of security about whether he'd ever attack at all.  I know that garrisoning vs. doing other things is a "press your luck" situation.  But that doesn't change the fact that feeling paranoid about needing to garrison, isn't enjoyable.  I think I wanted to be able to enjoy what Cha Dawn was doing, and I really didn't feel that the whole game.  Just felt like struggling the whole time.

So this game and narrative used up an entire day of my life.  Only to suffer a base walk-in?  WTF!!  Why bother?  Really, probably put 10 hours into this, why bother?  Other than to make a record of events of a game, I'm not really seeing the justification.

[bvanevery]

EPILOGUE:

I blew off this game.  A viable game; hey, I made Governor.  Clearly I could have retaken that 1 city.  But to get to that point, used up an entire day of my life.  That's not quality gaming time spent.