Anybody up for a game of stock SE4 at PBW?

[Possum]

capnq said:There are too many "classics" to read more than a fraction of them. I've been buying omnibuses from the Science Fiction Book Club faster than I can read them.

That's a big, big 10-4, good buddy.

And some of that so-called classic stuff is trash, too.

I plowed through all 1300+ pages of War & Peace, thinking "We must be getting to the good part soon, the part that made Tolstoy famous, right?"

Nope, the whole book was utter crap. Nothing but the clumsy machinations of a bunch of arrogant, selfish, small-minded aristocrats, and Tolstoy raving on about his laughably ridiculous theories of socio-military dynamics.

I think part of what made it so awful was the utter dearth of any sympathetic characters. My profoundly egalitarian sensibilities made the main characters all objects of scorn for me. Frankly, I felt they deserved the misfortunes that befell them.

OTOH, Silas Marner (of all unlikely things!), which we read in high school, was an absolute gem. Obscure as it may be among those books reckoned "classics", I enjoyed it enormously.

Almost anything by Charles Dickens is well worth the reader's time.

[Possum]

Cap, I am requesting a re-start.

There are non-stock AI empires, in what's supposed to be a totally stock game, and I drew two of them in my starting sectors.

Please see posts in the game forum

[capnq]

Yeah, I know. I have PBW set as my homepage, so I check those forums far more often than these.

The restart improved my initial position, but put one of the neutrals in my home system. I don't think I've ever played a game with "can start in same system" set before.

[Phoenix-D]

Neutral in home system + troops = free second homeworld. Though one system over would have been best.

[Possum]

Yeah, what Phoenix said. You got lucky

That's why I usually play with no AI empires or neuts when I play MP.

[capnq]

I once played a PBW game in "team mode", with the victory condition being to eliminate all the AIs. IIRC, it was 8 human and 8 AIs (no neutrals). Expecting to be constantly at war, a couple of us took Bloodthirsty as our happiness type. That turned out to be a mistake, because the random placement of homeworlds put all but one human on one half of the map and all but two of the AIs in the opposite half. (i.e. the setup came out [1 human + 6 AIs | 7 humans + 2 AIs]) I had treaties with 4 humans before I even met an AI, and often had to delay new treaties until I'd quelled the unrest from the last one.

If you ever play team mode multiplayer, I recommend at least 2-3 AIs per human. Preset starting systems is a good idea, too.