AAR: Apocalypse

[JarlWolf]

Very interesting way to approach this actually... and its a refreshing thing to see a new perspective.

[ete]

So far I like the way it lets me craft the story without depending on gameplay, and at the same time lets me play turns fairly fast with just quick strategy notes. But it is annoying having a game you just want to PLAY and having to slow down for writing/posting screenshots.

[JarlWolf]

How I do it is each turn/action I screenshot whats necessary, then I paste it into paint (which I open beforehand) just alt tabbing. Then I quickly save it, already having it go into specific organized folders and then I repeat the process. Then after I have done a reasonable amount I save, exit and then I look through all the captured shots and form a cohesive story portion out of it, editing it. Then I post it, finding music that fits as I do and bang, you got a new post.

Its still a lot of work though.

[ete]

Your one is likely a lot more time/effort than mine in the making of the AAR bit (especially with all that graphics editing), most of the effort on making this has been building the map and balancing the AIs correctly, which I enjoyed doing. Writing bits up takes a little while for me, but even my longer bits are a lot shorter than yours.

[JarlWolf]

Yeah, this playthrough/AAR is going to take me probably a number of months. But that's all fine because its an ongoing story and I can always pick it up and continue it, given where I placed it.

[Sigma]

Try using Irfanview. You can set up a keyboard command that will take snapshots of your screen and will save them in order to a folder of your choosing; that way you don't need to stop playing and you can write up your posts after each session instead of during.

[ete]

Good tip Sigma.

[ete]

Teching along, want demo because this ineffic is killing my income.


Met the Chairman.

Tactical decision here, directing energy towards the primary threats. Weakening and distracting the Hive is possible, maybe even taking a few bases from them. But doing so would allow the Annihilators to come in from behind and take the rest of their empire, which is pretty much game over.

I'll tolerate him for now, but will not respect his borders and take war if he brings it.


No tech for me .


My colonies, starting to be more respectable. Four bases and three CPs. Having good Nuts and reasonable energy for rushbuying helps a lot, though that indust penalty and the lack of minerals from my main resource squares is slowing me down. Starting to add rec tanks and a former for that lovely rocky mineral bonus, but still making bases.


Picking off a few Usurper defenders and exploring Hive lands.


The Technocrats. Again, keen to make peace due to my large worm army. Again, I accept, this time mostly because I want to take their tech before hitting them and can't probe them.

This Treaty will be broken, but for now I'm happy to swap some technology.






Excellent, even better than I had hoped. Flex will get me a load more pods and a start on IoD capturing and I can now go Demo


Exploring Techno lands, and next area of interest (one minor and one major, in fact)!

[Sigma]

It looks like you are using the old Technocrat graphics. The attached pcx has their custom bases.

[ete]

We have entered the lands of the humans known as Technocrats, resisting our urge to consume for now. The time will come to purge them, but if we are to preserve the Planetmind We must be careful and intelligent with our actions, our foes are strong and varied, and our forces are for now limited.

We find a great array of light focusing installations built on an artificial mountain, this much be the primary source of power for this faction, though it seems.. far beyond what they could use in their current state.

We find.. strange things in this land's past.. memories of the Betrayal. Of the Fear. Of the Fall, and the Growth, and the Revival.

We take the memories from the mind of their leader, and We see...

Josef Federov thought of himself as a good man, and one with a vision. On this new world, he could bring together humanity. Wars were fought for lack of resources, and here.. here they could develop means to move past that scarcity of resources without all the nationalistic feuding of Earth. His scientists were among the brightest of humanity, and with his neighboring factions, the Gaians and the University, they developed means to support and protect humanity in incredibly little time. There were always disagreements and tension, Deidre's insistence on preservation of native life, Zakarov's tenancy to overstep moral lines in his pursuit of knowledge (particularly with the test subjects of life extension therapies), but they were all great minds and shared a great deal of common ground. The other factions were struggling for survival on this hostile planet, while we were expanding and learning. We shared our knowledge, even food aid in some cases, with those who were in need, in exchange for political sway and influence to water down some of the more concerning societal traits which had developed. It seemed that within a few decades, humanity would at last unite, that our light would be preserved.

Then the Progenitors came.

We made council and agreed to be peaceful but cautious. The University tried to make contact, but their patrol was blown apart by what we would later learn to be a Tachyon Bolt. The University translation team was captured and tortured for amusement and information and amusement, with only one broken individual sent back to us to scare us.

The Usurpers slammed into us with the fury of gods. They brought war to this Planet, and we were not prepared. They had weapons made by a civilization far beyond ours, and even though they had lost much so could no longer build their greatest weapons... we could not stand against their power.

They burned the entire University empire within a few years, and the Gaians fell soon after. We were next in line, alone with the other human factions taking advantage of our weakness to steal technology for their own petty squabbles, with the full weight of the Usurpers bearing down on us, killing our people..

What choice did I have?

I made a deal with the devil, and with it saved my people.. but perhaps doomed my species.

I gave them an unconditional surrender, and bargained our survival in exchange for our assistance in rebuilding their technological base. I became hated by each other faction, known as the betrayer. My people became slaves to those who had killed their families, but they lived. In time as our usefulness was realized, our leash was relaxed, we were given limited independence, even a little influence to temper horrors the Usurpers unleashed upon the rest of mankind as they conquered faction after faction, the rest of humanity too busy with their ideological conflicts to unite until it was too late.

We created so much.. a shining empire of technological marvels. My people became.. not free, but they lived well, in comfort. We built a virtual world, and most of our citizens elected to transfer themselves to it, where they could work on mental tasks much more efficiently and enjoy any entertainment, or escape into a world where the shadow of the Usurpers was not present.

They made sure that we could not fight back, installing fail-deadly systems in all of our critical hardware which would destroy the virtual world (and with it over 98% of our population) if we tried to rebel. Few would risk that kind of loss for revenge, and we policed ourselves carefully to make sure those who were tempted were kept from means to do harm.

But the Usurpers great empire with all its consolidated might was ended in one day. The day of the coming of the monstrosity which seeks the end of all life. They were paralyzed by the raw Psionic fury of the Annihilator, even the automated defenses were disabled such was its initial surge of power, and the flood of Mind Worms devoured them.

I begged Marr to disable the EMP devices planted in our data centers, to save the minds of our people, but whether for fear of our revenge, thinking this was a trick by us, or simply neglecting the possibility that their defenses may fail.. they did not. We lost our soul that day. I will not forget them. We will rebuild, reinhabit the abandoned infrastructure, and rediscover our destroyed technological base. The dream is not lost.

[ete]

@Sigma, yes, I had a mental note to switch to those but somehow forgot it. Thank you.

And so much for keeping it short on the story side! This one has a whole lot of backstory though, probably the biggest I'm going to do.. though the Angels, Usurpers, Hive's other one, and CC all have quite a lot to talk about.. oh dear.

[Sigma]

Nicely done! You did my boy Federov great justice.

[ete]

Glad it fits reasonably well with your picture of him . I view him as being pragmatic even in the face of atrocities and try to make a deal, even a really bad one, rather than be a "fight to the death" kind of guy like the CCs.

I figure even with the huge loss.. they're in a better position to make their dream work now than before the Fall, since the Usurpers fell a whole lot further than they did (the Usurpers had a crazy huge empire before the fall, the Technos had an amazingly advanced but relatively small set of colonies and a load of facilities which produced resources for the Usurpers). Some part of Federov's faction could well have had a hand in directing up the Annihilator project towards being a real threat to the Usurpers, though it was not them who finally freed it.

Also I used way too many commas. I'll fix that at some point.

And I played 33 years more.. but probably won't post for a couple of days. Or maybe will get one more post in before inactivity... we will see.

[ete]

Time for some good old fashioned war.

The Hive is being uncooperative and is concerningly high on the power graph, plus I suspect they will attack me soon and the Psi combat advantage is key. And I have 3 worms and a launcher nearby ready to attack (and another worm coming in from the top) which can't explore more due to ZOC blocks.


Goes fairly well over the next few turns killing 5-6 units, though I lose one worm to a counter attack. Trying to make it to that Monolith to get easy repairs.


Still taking a heavy toll on Hive forces, but being worn down by their raw numbers.. and my incoming worm on the top is taken out by a surprise attack.


I make it to the monolith, but the Hive brings too many troops at my two remaining worms for them to hold. Only the rover I have sitting blocking the harvesting of 13 nuts per turn to The Hive remains of my attacking force.


The Annihilators start taken the SPs, starting with one which is not all that useful to either me or them luckily enough. Formers are not so important when your main production squares are fungus and monoliths.



I get some secrets and some other tech, then went for Crawler tech after. Cent Emp was tempting though.. and may have been the better option for various native extras. Eh. Crawlers are good, though lack of easy minerals hurts.


Check the SPs. All of them were from the start bar the WP, and I'm starting on the HGP which is decent, though not usually a favorite of mine, but it's that or the Merchant Exchange. Sad I gave the VW away, I'll miss that.


I send a rover in to do some scouting and kill a few worms, heal up at a monolith, then check out the Annihlator's main base. The rover's blinking so not visible.. but it's there!


Somehow.. during not my turn.. I captured an AA? I think the AI must have attacked me with an AA.. and lost. Bug, but pretty much irrelevant and rare so not worth getting an .exe hacker to look at.





Some diplomacy. I could do with the tech and these guys are not a current threat to Planet.. They can live for now.





Looking around my newly updated maps. No psionic scans of the areas of interest yet, so you'll have to wait.



Flew along the techno's mag lines and took a Usurper base, my first conquest .

Playing against those guys is really weird. I win every battle I attack first, they win every they attack first.. it's all about positioning and hiding and movement. But they have vastly better numbers.



Not seen my area for a while, so here you go. HGP underway with a 7 min square fueling it. A good number of bases, but they're mostly struggling with drone riots due to all the B drones from having lots of bases and bad effic from running planned late (I'm making doctors to stop it, but hurting already weak production). Trying to get rec commons and rec tanks up everywhere, then some creches and more pods. Plenty of rush buying because I'm getting a fair amount of energy, actually mostly makes up for the bad indust and poor mineral production.


Those guys are eating the SPs fast.. and that one is going to help them a lot against me.


Oh, Roze wants to talk? Lets see what she has to say..


Right.


Okay, they're getting moving with their industry..


These drones are getting hard to deal with, I need Psych. Energy is cheap for me, mins are vital. Anti-Drone facils cost minerals, Psych is just energy and riots slow minerals, so let's do some psych.



Got IA and went for Wealth, my normal unit morale is no big deal and defensive bonuses are not worth missing out in removing a bit more of my Indust penalty and giving a bit more money. Will go Knowledge at some point (when I start making troops of some kind), but for now let's be a Wealthy abomination.


Env Econ next, looking to improve my fungus production with Cent Med. Being able to use normal rocky road mines with crawlers will be nice too, though I currently have a grand total of one former.

AntiMind playstyle is weird.


Hive scout coming out of the fungus, here we go... I'm betting they outnumber me at least 5:1, maybe more like 15:1. I'm hoping they're distracted by the Annihilators or not sending their full force.. I may need to focus on caching some more worms to survive this. I wish like half of the great fungal mass had not been wiped out by pod pops


Last look over my bases. Most going for RC or RT, a few NNs, and two building the HGP (redirecting SPs is free so I usually set all bases to go for the one I want most, and switch away when something new comes up, I get it, or someone else gets it).

[Green1]

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