Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Completed Let's Multiplay Alpha Centauri - Binary Dawn - Game 4

Absinthe

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2012
Messages
4,062
Hellraiser, if I attacked you 50 turns ago I would've had to kill Kalin too, and that's assuming you and Kalin don't suddenly team up in response and create the one alliance I was very deliberately scheming to prevent from happening all game long, especially with Morganite support bankrolling you guys. Meanwhile Kalin for the longest time had no naval bases and no naval force to speak of, which would have freed you up to be less hyper-aggro and either rebuild or strike me while pretending to strike Kalin. Kalin may have been your unfriendly neighbor, but there were ways to extricate yourself from that situation. Since I could get both of you to dedicate your efforts to killing each other though, I was happy to build up, prevent any hope of alliance, and reap the rewards. That's the biggest reason why I allied with Zak in the end too, to prevent the possibility of a Peacekeeper-University-Morganite alliance. Then I just waited for Kalin to get his shit pushed in hard while you committed and I supported him just enough to bail him out and keep you a little more busy. Sorry about blueballing you, though.

Anyway, GG. Was definitely a fun game.*

*Strictly speaking whether or not the game is over depends on if AO surrenders, but if he doesn't I'll just go full tech (1 tech per 3 turns) and get Mental Harmonics (from University), Psych Imprinting, and Mind-Machine Interface in another 6 turns to vote myself supreme leader since Morgan doesn't have the numbers to stop it and cannot pop boom into those numbers either (and even if he tries I can pop boom while teching, I was about to plant 2 extra bases next turn anyway, plus I have Empath Guild).
 
Last edited:

Hellraiser

Arcane
Joined
Apr 22, 2007
Messages
11,300
Location
Danzig, Potato-Hitman Commonwealth
Yeah that's true, but after Jubei he was weakened and had no navy, plus you had a fair amount of distance to him. I was always closer.

Always expected you and Gravy to buddy up though and take out the Hive HQ and Fecundity Tower, just those two bases and Absinthe would have been severely crippled.

Gravy didn't ask me unfortunately, and my problem always was the weather paradigm which is why I mentioned it was more or less lost since gravy got probed. If you didn't have the land bridge potential I could have ignored you thanks to navy and later copters, and then I could have plotted against the Hive. Didn't plan on backstabbing anyone by myself, it was suicide, unlike back when I played Hive and managed to survive a 3v1 vs you, brozil and cassidy (even if cassidy was ninja about it). Even if gravy approached me about it I would have had to really think it over.
 

Absinthe

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2012
Messages
4,062
True, but Kalin would've had an opportunity to rebuild unmolested. One he would've taken, especially with his Weather Paradigm, and the alliance was still an option. If we attacked the both of you, it may have been manageable, but that would definitely create the alliance I was trying to prevent and you are both good at waging war, so overall that sort of situation created more uncertainties than simply ensuring the two of you fall into ruin and waiting to nail you at the end.
 

Absinthe

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2012
Messages
4,062
Sparta was my pact buddy from the start and there was never any backstabbing. Also backstabbing is kinda unavoidable when allied victory is removed from the game settings, unless someone plays kingmaker and basically goes for the allied victory despite it not being an in-game option.
 

Hellraiser

Arcane
Joined
Apr 22, 2007
Messages
11,300
Location
Danzig, Potato-Hitman Commonwealth
Chopin, Funeral March

CBC HIVE NEWS, 29th of June, M.Y. 2240

kD7uEiG.png


Comrades, with great pleasure we announce that following the unconditional surrender of the bourgeoisie U.N. Secretariat, the working class of the false U.N. is now liberated under the great leadership of Chairman Shen-ji Yang within the Human Hive.

With imperialist stooge Pravin Lal dead by suicide, realizing his failures as a leader, a glorious future awaits every drone as we serve the Human Hive forward on a path of enlightenment.

We reach out to all remaining U.N. forces in an act of mercy and compassion only a man as great as Shen-ji Yang is capable of. Submit to his will, lay down your arms and join the peace the so called Secretary General always promised but never delivered.

In other glorious news the untruths of The Suns have been shut down by the political officers, citing the “completely demoralizing nature and perversion of the written word found inside the publication”. The working class shall soon enjoy much more enlightened publishing to liberate their minds of exploitationist propaganda.

***

The framed picture was black and white, supposedly it has shown Pravin Lal just as he was just after he was chosen as the Unity’s chief surgeon. To Brighton, Lal looked optimistic on it, too optimistic. Either it really is him or some junior pencilpusher screwed up tagging the images in the datalinks, and this is some random car salesman from Mumbai who got to be employee of the month at an OmniCar dealership.

“I can’t believe the old bastard did it,” Avaserala said while holding a glass of wine. “Thought he wasn’t serious about the crystallized morpheus pill.”

“He was never cut out for this kind of work,” Brighton sighed while pouring himself a glass of wine. “He was too soft and naive. At least he kept this last bottle for the day peace came, this is probably the last French thing still existing.”

“He had the image and it was nice to have the media looking at him while we did all the work,” she replied. “I fucking hate those vultures, almost as much as I fucking hate space. The Suns’ Rubbishpeddler and being on the float are probably the worst things I have ever encountered.”

“He served his purpose, thought he would at least buy us time by distracting Yang, claiming innocence in the show trial or leading some rebel movement,” Brighton commented. “Tikaram and Vincze would find him something, maybe in the Nergal fungal wastes, or aboard the Donatello, but he picked suicide. All based on the hope that the Hive might spare his people if he takes his own life after ordering the surrender.”

“He missed his wife and found nothing but suffering ever since they took her away from him, the poor son of a bitch.” Avaserala paused to empty the glass. “Can’t blame him for hoping he’ll meet her again and taking the pill.”

“You really pity him?”

“I grew fond of his idealism; he was like a puppy or one of my grandkids. Utterly ignorant of what life is and always believing in that brighter future ahead. Meanwhile my life has become a single, ongoing revelation that I haven’t been cynical enough.”

“So our plans have failed, what now?” Vihn interrupted them.

“Call the mothership for evac, darling,” Avaserala told them, “my scales started itching from this disguise.”

They all laughed.

The turn was 140, ITZ over for the U.N. and good fucking riddance. Besides the egghead killing of the last couple of turns this PBEM game was mostly one giant exercise in frustration which I will explain in a moment. Even on my final TURN I had think really hard how to move units to kill all of my bases, for example U.N. F.R.A. which Absinthe didn't take but killed the defenders so nothing inside was left to kill the base. I got some lucky partial moves with a land transport that allowed me to get a scout into the base. This game didn't even let me quit easily, fucking jumanji of the binary age.

So let’s go over all the REDACTED thoughts and events that could not have been shared previously.

With wide-opened eyes and the rush of TURN flowing through my veins causing exhilaration, I opened the first TURN of this game back on March the 14th, and my eyes saw this:

RXMHweT.png


My disappointment was the size of the Hive’s population in the prior game, astro-fucking-nomical. I got the same shitty start location as two games earlier when I played Lal, the scale was just different since back the we played on a smaller map of planet made wider and with two extra continents.

Taking a closer look unobstructed by fog of war so that you know further why I saw dissapointed (this screenshot is from the map editor):

aYkvep1.png


North is barren or shitload of fungus. Sea west and east. Only viable expansion direction is south.

The other thing this location meant was that any base I settle will be very easy to attack from the sea or probe as the continent is too fucking narrow in this spot. Knowing how the other continents looked like and how the RNG like to spawn players, I decided I rather build closer, but not too close, to the western coast.

This was because whoever spawned on the largest western continent likely had at least one or two neighbours and with luck they would be busy killing each other (this didn’t happen, Absinthe and Gravy decided to carebear).

The other reason for picking west over east was that I assumed that the RNG might spawn someone on the much closer continent to east, somewhere around where AO was as Gaians last game. Later on it turned out Kalin spawned there, almost on the coast. I think I pissed off the staring location picking code at some point considering this other kick in the balls it gave me this game.

Ok, enough whining about the RNG, I saw this location and I thought what can I do to make it less miserable? Kalin had cuck island last game and won, surely there is a lesson in that. Yeah, I could go dutch and make me some landmass stealing it from that salty old fag Neptune. So my first long-term goal was trying to beeline for the Paradigm for that land raising.

The other goal was to scout south and claim the Unity wreck goodies, including of course the fabled reveal of the planet fall locations (tiles) of other factions which would tell me how fucked I possibly am.

Let’s fast forward...

DuRTXfk.png


...got a snazzy unity transport foil, good fortune, sent it out to pop pods and look for someone to trade tech with in case I am alone on the continent, moving more south to the wreck...

7oXs8Mp.png


...and it turns out Janior already settled the area north of it and I share a border.

So I think, ok, at least I can trade some tech? There’s always some deal to be made. I sent him a PM...

HoD2FjD.png


...more than one. Look at the dates. Roughly takes 1 turn per day, sometimes we got bonus double turns. I think he only traded me it because at that point eggheads already made their bullying apparent.

So I have an uncooperative goy located in my only viable expansion direction. Really the only choice is to rush his ass..

sri6t0m.png


...except it takes long as fuck to research anything. Normally you get this tech from a pod as a free tech sooner or later, or you get it via trade, first time I had to research it myself the slow ass way.

Kalin got 3 tech from pods, on top of his bonus tech as Uni and his superior research, main reason why he dominated the first half of this game. I got 0 techs from pods the whole game, not a single comm frequency from a pod, lots of worms though and junior who didn’t want to trade techs until a month later.

Anyway it soon became apparent Junior had synthmetal, so my dreams of lazorsynthmetal hippie-stomping blue helmets had to be postponed until impact guns. Huge fuck up that was, maybe should have went in anyway because Gayans have negative morale so even armored with t-shirts lazor dudes could survive. But I also think I postponed that because it turned out junior had lazors himself

:x

xeemFgL.png


Rhodinia continent expedition found signs of the Hive on the same turn. Absinthe at least wasn’t diplomatically lolrandom and he traded me tech, such as rover tech. My eyes were set on getting Impact guns to get rid of the southern obstacle.

YpCLzoe.png


University did some recon with probes. At this point it was a very peaceful send off.

The isle of the deep killed one of my unity transport foils. I got another one from a pod, send it south but it got a bad roll and sunk to the abyss. The UNCN Pacifica was still heading west after discovering the Hive and also got sunk by an isle of the ITZ after popping a pod with some bad vodoo in it.

Later on I got this message from the eggheads:

KlyrPay.png


I made a mistake by replying before I saw turn and assuming the worst and that I am toast if I do not comply. Then I saw this:

pHWTaqK.png


I expected a rape force, and it is just some weaksauce probes and a single unity rover he stole from me. After I figured out my error I flip flopped and made some demands, which were basically “disband the stolen rover so that I can deport your probes”. And the famous nailing to the wall impact gun bluff:

CZP2kje.png


The joke here was that if Kalin would agree to the terms I would actually stay pacted for at least the near term.

Anyway the rest is history and the official version in the egghead LARP was they got fed up with the UN and declared isolationism. If only that was true.

D2CtTwa.png


v8li0xV.png


Apparently isolationism means opening cans of worms in my turf, while I was preparing to purge the fungus there to expose jungle tiles and settle a base (future U.N. R.P.O.) This stalled me by a lot.

I think I lost two laser rovers to those fucking worms and a scout or two. You can imagine how annoying that was when the next thing that happened soon was...

2I3YJjP.png


...the infamous botched sneak attack with impact rovers and probes for infiltration. I had to spend my cash to turn that into a poison pill scenario, good thing I sent out those 2 scouts after the mountain rose up (from a pod Kalin popped, which sank his ship as it raised the sea floor above surface). Kalin could have attacked my base, but it was guaranteed I either kill his rover next turn or probe it since I had enough trash in the base to stall for a turn. His other forces were zone of control cock-blocked by two synthmetal lazor troopas in fungus I upgraded from scouts. Killing them was likely to be costly even if successful, so Kalin retreated.

Still this was really bad timing for me.

bAA6Phg.png


See the rover south of P.T.O. and the formers killing fungus down south next to C.C.B. on this same TURN as eggehads were found in fungus? That was part of my REMOVE GRANOLA force. At this point the lazor rover was mostly a backup as the primary objective for now was infiltrating him and getting tech. Had to retreat all of that because Kalin of course planned roughly the same against me. Although in my defense junior was being more obstructive than the worst of UN Bureacrats so he had it coming.

EdpXwfQ.png


The bluff was a bluff but I was 7 turns away from Impact weapons anyway. Always a good tech to get, even if there is no one around to kill plenty of people will trade you nice things for better guns. Of course usually you want to keep it for yourself to maintain the advantage, but if the only other guy to have the tech is someone who wanted to attack you, why contain it? Spread it and have everybody else catch up in firepower, otherwise he will do it. Might as well profit if the nemesis has those guns anyway.

aJkPFD1.png


At this points eggheads were a very big threat. I managed to cockblock this strike force somehow with suicidal scouts and Kalin decided to retreat.

j6sBDEM.png


I noticed earlier he used the supah rover formers this mod grants at the start as scouts in his attack force. They have the radar abbility so I jumped on that bandwagon. Also notice those fucking worms from that pod Kalin popped earlier are still alive, ugh.

Jg5om4d.png


26 turn and a bunch of PMs later I manage to make this deal and junior finally says something. Of course I wanted to kill him, but that thing got canned due to egghead incursions. It was a good deal and he agreed to it. This pissed off Kalin immensely a few turns later when he saw my first worms, although at this point I had enough impact rovers to mop the floor with the eggheads if they ever got into strike range.

pVgw8SD.png


On the other hand look at this research time in the bottom. Demokwacy was a long way away, tech stagnation didn’t help and I had enemies at the gates.

tkZB6Sw.png


Tried probing junior again, walked into his radar supah former while sneaking into fungus. Really bad luck.

K93pWa5.png


Waiting for eggheads to fuck up. BTW my first victory in combat was on TURN 50 with worms. The fungus was my friend.

YH6CuHO.png


Junior decided to pact up with me and I gave him another good deal. Got demokwacy and morgan’s comms which allowed me to call the council and get governorship. Later I did a bit of tech trading with AO now that I had his comm frequency. Since AO was south of Junior, making this continent cramped as fuck, I guess Junior got demokwacy and other techs from him. If only I could have gotten his comms sooner.

Anyway things started looking better, at least I could try to pop boom, like 20 or 30 turns after Kalin did, but still.

LpWxn9g.png


6kx9MM5.png


Politics ain’t cheap. Considering I never won governorship before at a stage where it mattered, I learned I had to be more pro-active. And since only I knew the vote was coming since only I had all comms, I went around bribing people before Kalin even realized I was gonna call the vote.

Moving on to way later in the game, gravy got probed. This was fucking bad and unfortunate completely out of my control, while also actually totally preventable in the one turn gravy had between ITZ fortress comming online and the first transport ship finishing. He had enough units to cockblock Kalin from landing by blocking tiles and could force kalin to go for probe foils which would really drain him, even if he eventually brute forced through gravy's probes.

Before the probing I could have taken out egghead bases as they had only plasmasteel goons, but silksteel stolen from gravy was too costly to brute force. The worst part however was the Weather Paradigm. Terrain raising fucked up a lot of things for me. For one it gave Kalin an option to ignore my fleet and come at me through a land bridge. The other was he could have raised land to increase the distance from the shore to his bases, fucking up naval landing potential.

The end result was the war has grounded to a halt and I couldn’t go on the offensive as much as I wanted to until I got nerve gas and enough units. Before the pleasurable probes I couldn’t go in and kill bases because of the charter and my shitty economy relying on governorship commerce. I guess if I had an option of murdering Otkrieta and the projects it might have been worth the tens of turns of sanctions. But maybe that would just get me killed sooner due to not being useful anymore for the top dogs of this match, who knows.

Later on Absinthe kept pushing in the “Chiron Security Council” group PM I set up on assassinating reseachers to tank the psionics and thus Empath’s guild research.

The way I was looking at it psionics tech was hardly a problem. Zakharov will get the empath guild? Good, he’ll scrap units weakening himself to get extra votes when nobody else will vote for him anyway, and the additional infiltration on Hive etc. was not my problem since I already was infiltrated by Zakharov. Psi armor? As you saw with Chet Donnelly Phase I already knew what to do about psi armor, silksteel was my bigger problem. Plus if he got psionics tech that means I could probe the tech eventually and it is one less tech someone would need to research. There was also the slim chance of stealing the tech and getting the project for myself, if Kalin got sloppy.

So from my side this assassination business to prevent psionics from finishing was not a good idea (and honestly unfeasible until Kalin screwed up) but out of pure goodwill I did it anyway, just to show to my allies I’m really committed to kill the guy and not plotting anything. In hindsight it was clearly a mistake.

Later on this happened:

UJwhMjA.png


Yeah, I probably did not have infiltration on Kalin. Also was quite annoyed by the gifting of tech and cash to the egghead menace as you can imagine. Un-bro move from a pact bro but I could do fuck all about it.

I had plenty of chances to get it with probes during Gagarin for example, but I either got greedy and drained energy reserves (not worth it, total shit action barely doing shit) or went for tech or something else. I might have infiltrated him during Operation Jubei, but I did not screenshot it and wasn’t sure. Probably forgot to do it before I killed a base.

tEf5XZm.png


Anyway I got around the imminent threat of losing infiltration of eggheads by bribing Morgan. I figured that might piss somebody off, but it wasn’t guaranteed Morgan would do it. Or that Gravy would vote for me. Luckily both happened.

I only got infiltration with a probe when Kalin emptied cognito elite HQ after thunderbottle a few turns later. Used a probe I upgraded to grav and some escort infantry to kill any cockblockers hiding around to do it. The escort wasn’t necessary; the two tiles leading to Cognito Elite HQ were empty.

In general after that there were more and more signs I have stopped being useful and ITZ coming. Such as:

MF6gmu2.png


Yeah, might have as well asked me nicely to not kill eggheads before they finish the tech. I just rolled my eyes and played along because there was little I could have done to stop it.

Then you get that sea former I found by accident snooping around my coast. ITZ gonna come so I might as well get ready?

Well being busy with eggheads was one problem, and in any case the idea was always “kill eggheads, hope I get chance to rebuild in peace”. Just going full turtle was appallingly boring as I already mentioned and I was quite pissed at Kalin for ruining a lot of my initial plans such as Janior killing and Paradigm rushing.

The other problem was my whole Hive defense plan was “raise land so that hovertanks can’t rape me from the west” (which is how I got Kurgan’d). Basically this was why I wanted to beeline to the Weather Paradigm, to make the shitty starting location with coasts too fucking close more defensible. This however was not possible due to my low income, the egghead threat and gravy being in a better position to research the tech (which he did, and got probed). I couldn’t expand so I had low tech rate and econ, and I couldn’t expand because I could not tech to land raising and enemies were around. It was a vicious circle that was not possible to break. Best shot was killing eggheads and grabbing their clay, but still likely to fail as soon as someone decided I am better off dead with no egghead around, which happened.

Anyway I knew what to do to at least try to prevent ITZ, so why I didn’t do it once I got land raising tech? Global warming was threatening to sink most of the closest tiles, 3 bases (all but 1 of those Absinthe attacked, and including the planetary energy grid making me waste money on pressure domes). Roughly 1/3 of the tiles around those bases Absinthe attacked were at some point threatened with sinking. These were my primary military bases putting out elite units.

Because I was really cutting it close, I had to raise land from the back so that my formers wouldn’t sink which slowed the whole thing down. The problem was I didn't know how long it would take and how many land raising before the tiles I wanted raised got raised. It took sometimes as much as 3 land raisings to unfuck an area or base, with 6 rovers taking 2 turns to raise it once. And I had to raise a lot because of this:

yftZyG0.png


Some fucking river that appeared out of nowhere and the tiles turned out to be all just 10 meter above sea level some 50-ish turns earlier almost everyfucking where. Either it was the river's fault or the terrain was already that low there and I didn't notice it earlier. It was nice while it gave +1 energy, not so nice when shit was sinking because of the low elevation. Fuck you Alph River or starting location RNG!

Formers eventually killed it while raising land. Before that happened though it decided to change shape, without any land raising, and removed a lot of the +1 energy which pissed me off again. Fucking river.

I had 20 formers doing nothing but trying to unfuck my land from the global warming for as long as I had land raising capability (last tech I got from the Hive after I gave my nerve gas tech), so about 8 turns? 6? As soon as I mostly unfucked that, I had to suboptimally raise land around the coastal bases away from the coast tiles which were just 10 fucking meters above sea level. We were probably 4-6 turns away from the sinking triggering (takes 20 turns to sink endangered tiles) when Hive struck.

Hard to get perimeters, defenders, kill eggheads and not got globalwarmthinkered at the same time. Sure I had option, I just couldn’t do everything at the same time. The thing was that I was toast for the same reason I managed to rampage across Kalin's turf, the Hive has a better economy in addition to better and cheaper fusion units. He could afford to throw units at me. And finally, as long as the land was not raised, all he needed to do was get probes to sabotage my perimeters. I can't build defenders, perimeters, copters for ship sinking, probes and everything else at the same time, sooner or later he would hit a weakness. Outcome was a foregone conclusion hence the surrender. Anyway he dodged my copter patrols and I had no ships to look for the transports.

In a last bit of the RNG kicking me in the balls, I ran green economy most of the game. How many wild worms I caught with +2 planet? 1 boil, and only on my last TURN when it was GG and I was razing my bases, and probably only caught it because I had +3 planet due to the nexus. Frustrating as fuck game except for the turns of ITZing Kalin.

tl;dr if in PBEM you start in the same place as I did just quit, the game is out to kill you more than the other players.
 
Last edited:

RK47

collides like two planets pulled by gravity
Patron
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
28,396
Location
Not Here
Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
So after reading another game i guess Hive is most evil and backstabbing faction.

The Hive canonically is a pariah of a faction due to how Chairman Yang is carrying out his 'live experiment with Humanity 2.0 whereby individualism is killed dead and the community is placed as priority. He had no qualms about nerve stapling to put down drones. I think actual game lore had him inflict that to captured enemy colonies. That act of atrocity made him an outcast even to his allies and every faction on the Planet refused to ally with him, resulting in the Hive's complete annihilation.

It's not evil. It's basically the conclusion of his thesis. The needs of many > the needs of the few. As twisted as his ideas were, it was still about Humanity. Now contrast that to Deidre who hug literal trees in this game and is willing to make deals with a psychic alien entity. A bargain that possibly surrendered humanity's free will to alien control. No matter how benevolent her narrative seems to paint the 'Planet' as she's practically okay with a bunch of brain-eating worms consuming entire colonies. And that to me, is fucked up. Even Zakharov, the scientist that pushed science to the extreme found her xeno-relations abhorrent and waged a war that he ultimately lost.
 

Grimgravy

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Sep 12, 2013
Messages
3,469
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
Good game! I'll post my own post mortem when when in the next day or so. Needless to say, things didn't go my way in the slightest.
 

RK47

collides like two planets pulled by gravity
Patron
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
28,396
Location
Not Here
Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
Hive interaction with University recreated through animal documentary

 

TROYTRON

Learned
Joined
Jun 6, 2020
Messages
42
Two months of slow grinding between peaceniks and eggheads, and then the game ends in a single turn due to surprise commie invasion. Go figure.

Still pretty entertaining to watch nonetheless. The post-mortems are appreciated for the view they provide into the crucial early game and the strategic maneuvering behind the scenes.

Will throw my hat in the ring if more players are needed for the next game.
 

Absinthe

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2012
Messages
4,062
TROYTRON, Elegy is back in the game and RK47 after years of shitposting these threads is ready to join us, so you're on the short list (consisting of only you) if we end up short a player, but right now it looks like we're full.
 

TROYTRON

Learned
Joined
Jun 6, 2020
Messages
42
TROYTRON, Elegy is back in the game and RK47 after years of shitposting these threads is ready to join us, so you're on the short list (consisting of only you) if we end up short a player, but right now it looks like we're full.
No problem. Hope to see a just-as-entertaining next game.
 

Grimgravy

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Sep 12, 2013
Messages
3,469
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
Morgan Industries
News from the front - 2252
We are now three cycles into the pacification of Morgan and his Capitalist regime that began in 2250. Colonel Santiago authorized the mission when it became clear Mr. Morgan would not bow the authority of Chairman Yang, now duly elected UN Mission Governor. Morgan has been reduced to four bases and with the loss of his capital last cycle seems to be on his last legs. Sources inside Sparta Command say they expect the mission will last several cycles more, given the relatively small scale of the task force and the amount of territory to be pacified.

A small Spartan flotilla, taking the long western route through the straits, conquered the strategic Morganic base at Tencent and secured access to the fresh water sea to open the operation while aging foils of conflicts past backed by SIA naval assets moved to contain Morgan's lone salt water sea base to the west. 2251 saw a string of Spartan victories capped off by the capture of Morgan Industries and its secret project. This cycle saw more successes in Morgan's industrial heartland west of the freshwater sea. Spartan casualties have thus far been minimal, but Command expects Morganic missile copters armed with nerve gas to score at least a token victory eventually. Commanders wary of the task force overextending itself were heartened by the news that fresh reinforcements have shipped out from the mainland and are expected in the near future.

Still planning of an post mortem report when Morgan is actually mortem.
 

Grimgravy

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Sep 12, 2013
Messages
3,469
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
Sorry, no pics and recollection may be a bit hazy. It was a frustrating game for me too. Hellraiser hated his spawn point. I wasn't wild about mine either, starting on the coast southeast of the Planetneck. Lots of coastline and any really good terrain is a long ways off. I had to be wary of probe foils showing up at any time. Plus, I knew someone would be to the north taking advantage of the the Borehole cluster while I get all the benefit of the dunes. I hoped to take them out early, but that hope was dashed when it turned out to be the Hive up there.

Early game, I got fairly lucky with pods. I got a Unity Foil or two that didn't immediately get eaten by Isles. The pulled in some cash and hurried a few pricey facilities back home. I remember having a few pressure domes thank to them before I could even build Recycling Tanks. I teched toward Impact weapons and was gearing up for an attack on the Hive. Then diplomatic contacts started opening up. Kalin's University looked to be running away with things, Hellraiser's UN was politicking, and then Absinthe's Hive proposed an Alliance. I didn't have firm location information on anyone except the Hive, and given the power graph, I decided to accept Pact (surprisingly it lasted the rest of the game) with the Hive.

This led to the Chiron Security Council against the University. My lines to Kalin were long, so I did plan on doing much but try to distract him. Some raids on his northeast coast were planned and I hoped to capture Black Mesa. Kalin negotiated a cease fire which I intended to honor, but then his genocide started and screw that. My failings in this part of the game are well documented in Kalin's posts in the thread. I hope I provided distraction enough to contribute to Hellraiser gaining the upper hand in the conflict. Absinthe played this part well. He contributed cash and tech to war effort but virtually no troops, building his economy instead. Sometime during all this I decided I had no hope of winning and the best I could do was play Kingmaker. Enter the Shadow Council against the UN. The University crumbled, but was able to do a fighting retreat and I was able to provide a Sea Colony pod to ensure Zakharov escaped. Much UN butthurt ensued and I call that a win.

Endgame, Absinthe finally fielded some troops and thwacked the UN. After Hellraiser GG'd AO's Morgan proposed he bankroll me attacking the Hive. An interested proposal to be sure, and one that might work. Might work if my troops were at all in position for such an attack. They weren't. They were more in position to go after Morgan. Plus, it would ruin the LARP. Sparta and the Hive had lived side by side in alliance for a long time. I had long since accepted my kingmaker role. So Santiago played to dutiful Commander and moved to pacify the defiant capitalists as detailed above. The expeditionary force got the job done in 5 turns before the land reinforcements could arrive. A chopper from the mainland did manage to just get in on the fun. Elite troop mobility and control of the Freshwater sea gave me a lot of mobility. AO needed more probes in general and some with more than 1 move in particular. I didn't have to worry much about being counter probed most of the time, and when I did, I was able to use an elite fusion rover probe to take out the potential threat.

It wonder how things would have turned out had I ignored Kalin apparently running away with things and attacking the Hive way back when. Even if I had won against the Hive (definitely not guaranteed), I expect I would have lost against the winner (presumably the University) of the western conflict afterwards.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom