PBW "newbie game"

[Phoenix-D]

Hah, Certadsh parinoria was good for once, eh? Sneaky little..Dragon was defintely the winner of this one.

I'm picturing the Irh-Nrr as a kinda of benevolent Rage right now, mainly because of that Last message..

Phoenix-D

[The_General]

Just to let you all know that this PBW is cool. As far as RP goes, unless it's setup in the game design and part of the conditions of winning, then the RP should be replaced with PR = public relations. This is what I have been doing with both the Certadsh & Irha-nrr. After I walked into this game as a take over player, I evaluated the empire and divised a plan of PR. Since all of you, out ranked me in score, systems, ships, and resources, I decided on a appropriate number of ships to maintain. Then I converted all planet facilities not need to support my designed empire economics in research centers. I have focused heavily on completeing techs, and thru PR I have gained techs and bought time to gain better techs than some of you are cuurrently using.
This is a more detailed response to Dragons first comm to me earily in the game. I was not going to be a sitting duck for anyone. "You can come see me, but leave your guns with the doorman."

[BeeDee10]

Heh. I've managed to swing a subjugation treaty with Dragonlord. First time I've ever been on the recieving end of one of those.

My net resource production after tarrif is now exactly half of my maintenance expenditure, and I have zero reserves. Hopefully I've scrapped and mothballed enough junk that I won't lose massive chunks of fleet to neglect, but in any event there's no way I'd be able to field a force sufficient to stop Dragon from continuing his genocides.

The Irha-Nrr are infinitely patient and infinitely benevolent. We will wait quietly, humble servants of the Dragons, and perhaps one day yet we will find a way to make the galaxy safe for all life forms.

[Dragonlord]

OK, time for my next response.
Seems like I have pretty much won the Newbie II game, with Beedee throwing the towel after the first hostilities. Frankly I had hoped he would put up more of a fight.

Regarding mines: I never send a fleet into hostile territory, especially territory that was been well developed for years, if I don't have the capacity to sweep 100 mines with that fleet.

Regarding my betrayal: like in any game, I play to win. In this specific game, the only way to win (because of victory conditions) was peace for 1.0 years. I have never actually won a game like that but I assume it means that if all races are at peace with each other (and all AI races have been eliminated) then after 10 turns he with the highest score wins. I could have tried the peacefull route, and in fact did for a while, but Beedee was keeping up with me every step of the way. In fact he was usually slightly in front, score wise. Therefore the peaceful route would not work, and I assume that he chose to role-play his race the way he did precisely because of the victory conditions.
Furthermore, we expected that he had the same plan as we did. Namely, strike a blow against the other to knock a few 100M points of his score, then make peace and wait 1 year. Circumstantial evidence pointed that way, his number of warships in space consistently kept in step with ours. Looked like an arms race. He also built a forward resupply space station in a nebulae next to my border, which was clearly intended for future fleets. So I don't entirely buy the story of having caught them completely unprepared and by surprise.

As for the Certadsh, I didn't know they were pulling out of the game till I got some hints from Beedee and read the details here. I still wonder why Phoenix did that, were you tired of your role in 3rd place?

To keep within the roleplaying (pacification of AI species, not killing civilians) We went along with this as much as possible (for amusement) it was a good storyline. The Irra-nur have kept up that role pretty consistently. We never suspected them in the blowing up of the star, we thought it was the "trick" the Certadsh spoke of, and really wondered how they pulled *that* off.

As for the Xiati homeworld: I did not remember to check the race of the colonists. All I saw was a single big Irrh-nur controlled planet in a very strategic system, your main forward resupply base. The Tzeech had also told us that you considered that planet to be very important.

The Irrh-nut still have some 90 warships unaccounted for, and I a bit wary that they may suddenly show up through a wormhole into my core systems.

The offer of a subjugation treaty puzzled me, but I jumped on it since it would give me all his ship designs plus minerals I can well use. The Tzeech suspect that this is but a temporary ploy, in order to buy time to regroup and use the impressive economic might of the Irrh-nur to build a fleet against us. (tough though while paying a 40% tariff). If BD thinks this is the next best thing to surrendering, why not just surrender? Here in the forum I mean, he could just say he gives up and we can stop playing.

For now we'll continue, and cautiously explore his systems while reaping the benefits from the subjugation treaty.
If what BD says is completely true, then not even a sudden alliance of all three humans against me could stop me now, I think...
And I don't think you can get the Tzeech to betray me, after all the tech I gave them and my fleets ready to pounce wherever it's necessary

And yes, the three-pronged attack against Irrh-nur systems was long in the planning. Initially as defensive forces, then as we grew we contemplated an attack. The original plan was to create a wormhole into a backdoor Certadsh system (assumedly badly defended) and proceed to wreak havoc there with our central fleet. Later, when we found out that the Certadsh weren't really a threat, we changed tactics. We coordinated our attack with the Tzeech, so that we would first draw Irrh-nur attention to one place, and two months later the Tzeech would invade on another front. This, I think, has been pretty succesful and also very entertaining to plan and execute :-)

[Dragonlord]

Oh yes, one thing I forgot to respond too: the Irrh-nur have been building starbases like crazy,they had 22 while we had 8. We had no way of knowing if these were construction facilities or heavily armed wormhole defenders, so we got quite suspicious of Irrh-nur intentions.

[BeeDee10]

You could've _asked_ what those space stations were. The Irha-Nrr tended to be very open, the only reason they ejected your cloaked scout ship was becaus you were being so suspiciously sneaky about it in the first place.

I built that nebula base because I'd misremembered which of the red nebula bitmaps was the "100% impenetrable" one and figured it'd never be seen, so why not? It was something I'd never done before in a "real" game, and I figured at some point in the far future if the Narcisston colonies immediately behind it got trashed I could use it as an emergency subsitute resupply point for my defences. Phoenix will vouch that I haven't even sent scout ships past that system since my first mapping foray in the first year or two of the game, he's been my partner the whole time and would have seen.

As for the victory conditions, I really didn't care who was first or second or whatever; I just wanted that year of peace to come about as soon as possible. The only time I ever care about the score when playing is when I'm worrying about triggering MEE, other than that it's a completely abstract and pointless number IMO. If you were so concerned about finishing that final year in "first place" I'd have been willing to gift you stuff until you got your wish. It's easy enough to pump your score to dizzying heights by just building big empty ship hulls.

I guess I was just RPing this one too much. That's why the subjugation treaty, too; I figured it'd buy the Irha-Nrr as much time as possible to continue stashing those "archive pods" all over space so that after they're destroyed there'll be a better chance they'll be able to restart again in the future. If you want to declare victory and end the game at this point, I'm willing.

Got a new race already playing a second game now that's explicitly intended to be RP-centric, so perhaps I'll do a little better. I'll be more careful about my defences this time, too.

[The_General]

So do we continue with the game under these new situations? Or are we declaring victory to DragonLord? And how does the end of the game process proceed? Do we continue playing out the turns or does the game just get closed?

[CaptSpoogy]

That Dragonlord - he's just mopping up former first place Nostropholo in Newbie I. I'm not sure if he's going to turn on me next...

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[Phoenix-D]

Two players- I hit the finished button, the AI should take over.

As far as the end game goes, your guess is as good as mine. I think "peace" means everyone wins though (damn that sounds trite )

Phoenix-D

[BeeDee10]

I'm willing to keep on playing, I guess there's always the chance of something unexpected happening. But at this point it all seems to be a matter of mopping up; I don't think I'll be able to build up enough equipment to do anything significant in a year's time, and there's only a handful of AI systems remaining to be pacified. Phoenix has devastated himself quite thoroughly too, and though the Tzeech may have good tech they don't have the resource base to do anything spectacularly disruptive (unless you're hiding a couple of sunbusters in there or something