PBW "newbie game"

[Dragonlord]

Oooh, you nasty fellow. I *do* know about the wormhole you just opened into the Wurtuy system. But maybe that's just by accident?
The Irrh-nur invited me (just in time I guess) to send a scout ship through that system, and though my ships is now (beginning of turn 89) in another system, it came from Wurtuy. So I guess that counts for being there to see the wormhole appear..

But I do recall a thread somewhere where people said that if someone tries to separate himself from the galaxy by closing all wormholes, you'd see it if you were ancient race.
Hmm...we newbies will figure it out as we go along I guess.

[Phoenix-D]

You think that's it? You ain't seen nothin yet.

Phoenix-D

[BeeDee10]

I believe that you're only explicitly notified in the log if you have a ship or planet in the system that the warp point appears in, but if you've got that area of space mapped you'll see the line appear on the map regardless of your presence there. Since you're ancient race, you'll see all warp lines appear or disappear wherever it may happen. The same applies to planet creation and destruction, explaining how you could watch that Irha-Nrr Maker class ship chewing its way around the asteroid belt in Cetkirk excreting planets as it goes even before you sent that scoutship there.

[BeeDee10]

Well, it looks like Newbie II might be wrapping up soon. It turned violent after all, and my poor Irha-Nrr have been caught unprepared to deal with war on such an enormous scale. Too many resources devoted to preparations for constructing ringworlds for my pacified species, not enough to building up those 30-ship fleets necessary to go head-to-head with a big human player. I am now attempting to negotiate terms with Dragonlord to preserve the lives of as many of my pacified species as possible.

I finally _did_ learn something new about playing against human players by playing Newbie II; they are much better at betrayal than the AIs. An excellent lesson for PBW players, I recommend it highly. I knew it intellectually beforehand, but until you actually _see_ the empire you've spent two weeks (realtime) building in the spirit of goodwill and peace for all races suddenly confronted by military forces you haven't prepared in the slightest for it's hard to keep it close enough to heart.

[Dragonlord]

All hell is breaking loose in Newbie II.
I know some other people follow this thread as well so I'll try to give them some info, although it's a little hard if you can't see our galaxy map.

There's some hilarious stuff happening. As Phoenix mentioned, he's done something odd or nasty, and I'm trying to figure out what it is. I got a message from Beedee hinting that the Certadsh (Phoenix race) will be turning over all non-certadsh inhabited planets to the Irhh-nur. Maybe that's what Phoenix meant. I had been preparing for war for a long time, cause I knew If I didn't I would not win, Beedee has a higher economic base than me.
Just so you know, there's four human players. Beedee and myself are tied in first place with a score of 1.7M, the Certadsh (Phoenix) are a distant third at 600M, and the Tzeech race has 450M.
The Tzeech are under my protection, the Certadsh have had a Partnership with Beedee for a long time.

The map is a medium (i think) spiral, a true spiral. There is a circle of 10 or so systems in middle, half controlled by Tzeech and half by Beedee / AI. From the circle branch off three arms, the west arm curls to the west and splits off, these are all Beedee planets. The north and south arm curl to the east, run along the eastern edge of the map and meet up. I control the eastern 40% or so of the galaxy. So, barring wormhole openers, I only had to defend two wormholes, the ones in the north and south branch which lead to to the center.
Phoenix owns about 6 systems north of the central circle.

But Beedee (thus also Phoenix) has had Stellar Manipulation IV for some time now and wormholes are springing up all over the place, though not into my core systems yet.
I opened a wormhole to connect my east central system to the part of the center ring that the Tzeech control.
(does this still make sense?).

Anyway, I declare war a bit sooner than expected because Beedee spotted one of my fleets near the north branch border.
I anxiusly awaited the next turn. Through the element of surprise I was able to destroy about 15 of Beedee's ships, and will destroy some outpost planets soon. (we both have about 120 ships total).

Now here's what shocked me: when I opened the Last turn, I first looked at the battle reports and saw all went well. Then I scroll down in the log and see *a star has blown up* !!! Oh my God !! This star was in the Qornor system, which is about the furthest removed from the enemy as possible !! (bottom right corner of map).
Though I think that no enemy has maps of my systems, I had gifted that map to Beedee some time ago because I was showing him how I was dealing with the Last AI race there that was close to me. Remember, I'm a newbie, have never dealt with advanced stellar manipulation or WMG's or any like that before.

So I panicked. For a few minutes I was *convinced* that the enemy had somehow magically gotten a ship through 6 of my systems undetected, and could now happily follow the string of systems like a string of pearls, blowing up stars along the way.
Then I realised this was probably a catastrophe (from the ones that happen like every 100 turns). The timing was very bad for that
I lost 7000M colonists, and 22 ships to that stupid star. (this was an outdated fleet which was invading planets from the Last AI).
Oh well, saves on maintenance.
Too bad cause there were some good planets in that system.

Meanwhile, I see that Beedee is opening up several wormholes from his central nexus system towards the north and south branches of the spiral. Ironically, since he did not expect my attack, that now puts my fleets within 2 jumps from his nexus rather than the 7 jumps it would have taken before. However, I think Beedee isn't quite the newbie, since his new wormholes terminate on top of a core planet of his, which is assumedly heavily defended.

We'll keep you all posted on further developments

PS: the star destruction led me to a question about cloaking: I have sats with Level 3 cloak detectors everywhere, of the Hyper Optics kind. Can these detect all cloaks or do I need to research the Gravitic sensors as well? Is there something like Gravitic Cloaking? (maybe as a racial ability?)

[Phoenix-D]

OK, time for me to spill:

What I did was throw the balance of power totally out of wack. We've been doing a bit of RP, especially between BD and myself, and the Certadsh history is catching up to this game.

The Certadsh have an Enemy, that chased them from their previous galaxy, reducing system after system to ash. The Certadsh made it.. barely.. and have been in a state of war for over 500 years, both here and there. It's the reason they're so xenophobic, along with their Neutral happyness type (which is a PAIN to keep happy..)

Now, I decided the Certadsh are going BACK, for revenge. The initial plan was to give all ships and planets not in my core systems to BeeDee's Irha-Nrr, and destroy the other ships, abandoning the planets. Problem: SE4 won't let you abandon your planets with over 50m people!

So I donated much of my equipment and planets, and am in the process of destroying the rest. Suddenly the third place player drops to 5th, and all hell breaks loose.

Phoenix-D

[BeeDee10]

Roleplay is what's killed me, too. My race, the Irha-Nrr, also have a history; they are descended from machine life forms created by an organic species that went to war with itself and used the Irha-Nrr as a weapon to destroy themselves in the process. Since then we've dedicated ourselves to protecting every sentient species we can from genocide. I think I wound up spending far too much time building troops, preparing for ringworld construction (I _just_ got started, darnit), and generally mopping up AI planets with the minimum of enemy casualties. I _thought_ that I'd managed to maintain a chordial relationship with Dragonlord, but he's obviously been gunning for me for some time now and building up his forces for this sneak attack (I didn't buy your "military coup" justification for a moment, Dragon; those ships came pouring in on three fronts the turn immediately after Phoenix upset the applecart. My dear trusted ally was setting this up for quite some time while we discussed peace.

Lesson number one for newbies: Pragmatism first, RP second. There are going to be players in the game with you who have the philosophy that in order for them to _win_, it is necessary for you to _lose._ Even if you don't approach the game that way yourself, be prepared for it in others.
In reference to Dragonlord's analysis, now, to provide a view from the other side.

Heh. I was thinking of accusing you of being non-newbie myself, Dragon. I am facing clearly unwinnable odds, you hit me at a really bad time. I think I've got enough combat ships to take out one or maybe two of your three fleets, but they are currently scattered all over the place mopping up pissant little Krill colonies. I was planning to use the nice shiny new warp openers to help gather them all together into a larger, more centralized force, but instead I'm now having to frantically re-close those new warplines as a delaying tactic while my surrender Messages get through.
Lesson two for newbies: ten ships in a single fleet is worth a hundred ships each on their own. Especially when most of those hundred are nowhere near the front you're trying to defend.

Another big problem with my existing fleet is that, since I haven't faced anyone with phased polaron beams yet, I stuck with ordinary Shield Vs for their added strength. Lesson three: If you research your way up to Shield V and then think "nobody's using PPB and if I add another tech level hitting "upgrade" will just weaken my designs," invite a friend over and have him start punching you in the face until you realize it's good to have defences available against all varieties of attack.

That central planet I've been opening warp lines from is _not_ heavily defended; I started building the defensive starbases only after I started opening the warplines. This was such a stupid mistake I won't even put a lesson number on it, it's the same one the Romans made with their roads. Paths which let your defence fleets move rapidly around your empire will _also_ allow their attack fleets to move rapidly around your empire if you don't blockade them well.

Of course, since in this case Dragonlord also has warp opening tech, it's vital to have a highly mobile defence fleet. There's no way to predict where exactly the attack will come any more, once that tech is in play. Which leads me to lesson four that I learned: Static defences are useless without ships to back them up. One of his attacking fleets hit a huge frontier world that I'd stocked with thirty weapons platforms, and before it was glassed they managed to take _one_ of his ships down to 50% damage. Maybe I just chose a bad mix of weapons, but in any event he could have chosen to simply bypass that planet and strike deeper into my territory instead.

Oh, lesson five; know thy enemy and defend in depth. Treaty or no treaty, I should have had observation ships and satellites a system or two deep beyond my borders. If your dear trusted ally refuses to allow you to place surveilance like that, start building your preemptive strike force immediately.
Man, it's been way too long since I read Sun Tzu. Maybe I should force myself to write an essay about SEIV and Sun Tzu before I play another PBW. I'll post it here if I do.
BTW, Dragon, I must express shock and dismay on behalf of the Irha-Nrr that you would think we had committed such an atrocity as to destroy the sun of an inhabited system. Nay, it is _you_ who are committing the atrocities; this very turn your fleet annihilated a defenceless Xiati homeworld that you had claimed only Last turn to be intent on "liberating" from my protection. Shame on you.

Oh, one Last gripe; I shouldn't have played a race as sensitive to civillian casualties as the Irha-Nrr in a game which had surrender disabled. I guess I'll just have to surrender the _hard_ way.

[BeeDee10]

Drat, I forgot to mention one of the most important things I learned in this game; forget everything you learned when practicing against the AI. The AI sucks in ways that no human ever would, so by learning to beat the AI you're learning to make grievous errors when playing against a human.

This newbie game was extremely useful for me, I recommend something like it to everyone who's new to PBW. Just make sure you're psychologically prepared to get your *** handed to you at any moment (thus revealing a major oversight in strategy at the same time.

[Phoenix-D]

In fairness, you probably would be having a better time if I hadn't pulled that stunt

Having your ally, who just happens to be #3 in the game, vanish in a matter of turns..epsecially when my static-but-invisible defenses would have slowed Dragon down (minefields. Lots and lots of minefields) a bit..

EDIT: BD, you little..

Anyway, I hit the "finished" button for my empire. The AI should take over what's left, so unless the Dragons and tzeech go at each other's throats, game's over. (remember victory condition DOES allow for peace)

Phoenix-D

[This message has been edited by Phoenix-D (edited 20 July 2001).]

[BeeDee10]

Well, he blew through a 56-mine field down in Narcisston, so it might not have slowed him down much.

I agree that your stunt is what set him off, but I think it would have happened anyway. I was willing to share the universe, and I mistakenly believed him when he told me he was too.