Battlefield Earth - Turn Reporting Thread

[Googlie]

This is a SMAX game

Difficulty level is Transcend, tweaked (see below)

Players, in turn order, are:

Hive - Flubber
University - Archaic
Morgan - Mongoose
Drones - Qantaga

The AI factions are the Usurpers, allied with their submissives, Miriam and Cha Dawn:

You have escaped the alien crossfire on Chiron and have returned to Earth, only to find the Usupers esconsed on the Australian continent.

You have each others (and Cha and Miriam's) commlinks

Game conditions are:

all winning conditions on
do or die on
look first on
tech stagnation - no
spoils of war - on
directed research
intense rivalry - no
no unity survey
random scattering of Unity pods
No random events
all other custom conditions - no

other conditions:

pods do not produce monoliths (there are several scattered around)

The AI start with their HQ's already built and the Usurpers have a few additional bases with rec commons in addition to their usual recycling tanks

Suggested play rules (Forum Wars' set)

• Communications - available form the beginning - you have everyone's commlink
• Total freedom in Design Workshop (upgrades anytime, during turn or on-field,
• Retro-engineering - OK, except for using the probe rover chassis before discovering Doc. Mobility
• SE switches "quickies" forbidden - (obviously you can experiment to see what effect various SE choices have, but cannot change, play moves, then change back in the same turn)
• Council notification - immediate broadcast to all players (Post in the thread and e-mail in advance to all by player who anticipates calling the elections, citing candidates and votes. After each player's turn, post in the thread the running totals)
• Stockpiling in Qs anytime - OK
• Crawlers Upgrade anytime - OK
• Probe actions: Must choose vendetta option when probing other players, rebuke if a pactmate (OK to probe teammate at any time)
• Using the AI - Cannot use the AI to bribe on council votes nor to demand withdrawal of units
• Cannot use the right click feature for multiple drop moves to extend range (ie limited to 8 tiles unless owning the Space Elevator SP)
• Cannot use the 'set waypoint' feature for automatic worm hunting/lifecycle enhancements
• Must 'Accept' or 'Decline' an offered Pact or Treaty that the other player has indicated 'Accepted' before exiting the diplo box and playing the turn (i.e. no accepting pending treaties/pacts *after* declaring vendetta in the same turn )
• Cannot use the F4 feature (or the bases feature of the F2 screen) to change an infiltrated faction's workers to specialists

Passwords have been sent to all, and 2111 has gone to Flubber

(Well, they will go as soon as I get everyone's e-mail addresses)

Good luck all,

Googlie

[Googlie]

Does anyone know Mongoose's or Archaic's e-mail addresses?

(I've sent them both a message thru the 'Poly e-mail system, but if they are anything like me, they never check)

G.

[Qantaga]

Googlie,

I have e-mailed you what I believe to be Mongoose's e-mail. I don't know Archaic's.

[Qantaga]

I just found Archaic's e-mail in another game thread. I don't think he'll mind me posting it here, since he posted it in the other thread:

archaiceternal@hotmail.com

[Googlie]

Battlefield Earth, 2111 has been sent to Chairman Flubber, and passwords and forwarding instructions have been sent to all faction leaders

Good luck all

Judaa "Googlie" Marr

[Flubber]

2111 to archaic

Just a note . . . for me , "look first" was NOT on so I would anticipate that you will all find your first bases already established

Just curious, but why is it 2111 and not 2102 (which gives Googlie the first year to do setup and set passwords ) ??

[Googlie]

2111:

ah - that was to get the aliens and the Cult established (2105) - so I set the year to 2110 so that Miriam could start her researching from the beginning. Played the first turn (moving nothing for the human players) to set the passwords, etc.

Hence the 2111 turn (it could equally well have been 2106)

HQ established:

That was just so that I could name them New York, Beijing, etc.

G.

[Archaic]

And, why are all the faction graphics not what they should be, or is that just me?

Turn to Mongoose.

[Googlie]

A:

That's because when you open a scenarioded game, it loads the faction graphics that are resident in your alphacentauri.ini file.

So although the faction list for this game is:

Faction 1=HIVE
Faction 2=UNIV
Faction 3=MORGAN
Faction 4=DRONE
Faction 5=BELIEVE
Faction 6=FUNGBOY
Faction 7=USURPER

If in your last game played you had, say, faction # 3 as the PKs, then you will see Lal's graphics in this game for Morgan

There are three things one can do:

1) just live with it, as most of us do - but be especially careful around diplo negotiations, 'cos it's easy to forget that you might not be talking to, say, Miriam when you see Domai's face. - a good check is the powergraph standings, where you see the current faction colors (or the commlink button faction profile window)

2) just before playingf the turn, start a new single player game with the seven factions in the order above, then quit it after the pod has landed, and load the gameturn - the correct factions will now display (as your .ini file will have changed to save your last "game"

3) copy the list above and edit your alphacentauri.ini file just before you load the turn to play

Not too onerous if yopu are in a handful of scenarioed PBEMs - more time consuming if you are in ten or more.

G.

[Flubber]

hmm

I knew the faction graphics one but by starting in 2111 will it work so that the rest have no accumulated research but both Domai and Miriam avoid the 10 years of no research or did you just do something to help the AI on that ?

From the way the AI hes been portrayed, we may need the extra tech from a domai researching from the beginning

[Qantaga]

2112 to Flubber.

Domai is researching now. Two entire research points accumulated and a quite hideous lab rate until I get the initial bases set, but research is accumulating nonetheless.

Googlie, thanks for all your hard work getting the game set up for us. This looks like it should be a lot of fun.

[Mongoose]

MY 2112 sent to Qantaga.

[Qantaga]

2113 to Chairman Flubber.

[Flubber]

2113 to archaic

[Archaic]

Turn to Mongoose

[FlameFlash]

I hate to jump in here on a turn reporting thread, but this is where you were pointing me, googlie... supposedly there's a need for a player? It doesn't look like it to me...

[Qantaga]

FlameFlash, no worries on jumping in. I think a couple of players have expressed interest in getting in on a second game of this scenario.

Perhaps you can try this thread over at CGN:

http://www.civgaming.net/forums/show...=&threadid=792

Sorry to keep bouncing you around.

[Googlie]

FF:

I did point you here (for the game set-up - I guess it might not be everyone's cup of tea)

There is a similar game waiting in the wings, with Hobbes and knowhow2 signed up - you'd make a third, so we just need another to make it happen.

G.

[Mongoose]

My 2113 on to Q.

[Qantaga]

2114 to Flubber.

[Flubber]

2114 to archaic

10 minute turn around

[Archaic]

Turn to Mongoose.

Seeing as that we're supposed to work together (At least for now) to rid Earth of the Alien menace, what say you all to a mutual exchange and co-ordination of knowledge and research? Together we can accomplish far more than we can alone.

[Flubber]

I'm game for that. I am currently researching centauri ecology and would trade/give it to any others if I could get some tech back-- I'm assuming that no one is crying out to get Doc Loyalty? If someone already has cent ec. they could gift it to me and I could use the research points toward some other discovery to speed us all along our way. By leapfrogging up the tree, we can all get to good tech faster

[Mongoose]

MY 2114 to Q.

I agree. BUT, we need to coordinate closely. Indiscriminate proliferation of techs will drive up the tech cost for all of us. If we all shared our starting techs, for instance, none of us might get a new tech for another 30 years. The leapfrogging concept is excellent, and should be our primary tool.

I have proposed and preaccepted pacts to all of you. I suggest you each do likewise with each other. We'll all be better able to track our combined tech efforts once mutually pacted. There will eventually be additional commerce energy to fuel our research, as well.

We ought to give some mutual consideration to our intermediate tech goals...guess Vel would call it selecting a beeline.

Will we have time, do you think, to lift energy restrictions before pursuing D:AP?

[Qantaga]

2115 has been sent to Flubber.

I should have read Mongoose's post before I played the turn, but 'Poly wouldn't load for me and the turn was "burning a hole" in my e-mails in-box.

I have accepted Mongoose's pact. I offered Flubber and Archaic treaties, but I will gladly accept a pact from them, too.

Mongoose, if we coordinate wisely, I think we should have the time to get to EnvEcon before going for D:AP. Should we run for IndAuto first and then EnvEcon?

I am currently working on CentEco, too. Perhaps Archaic already has that one. If he can send that one to Flubber and I, we can switch over to a new tech and take a small hit (but well worth it for the crawlers).

[Mongoose]

As I recall, you don't lose any accumulated research when you acquire your current research goal by other means. Is that what you meant by "...we can switch over to a new tech and take a small hit..." ?

Only 'loss' I think happens is that the tech goal selected will have a higher cost than the one just acwquired, but that's mostly a function of # of techs already known.

edit for clarity.

[Qantaga]

Mongoose, you are correct. What I should have said is that we will only take a small hit on the tech discovery rate of the NEXT tech we choose. You are right that it does not affect the current tech discovery time at all.

[Flubber]

I'm pretty sure that Qantaga was referring to the fact that acquiring techs, before finishing the research on the first tech researched, WILL adjust the tech cost of that tech. After you have researched one tech, the regular rules apply in that being gifted the tech you are researching means that you can shift to another tech with no change in accumulated research or tech cost.

[Qantaga]

Well now, Flubber, you have enlightened me. I was unaware that the FIRST tech rate could be affected before discovery since I rarely make tech trades before I discover my first tech (mainly because most games I play do not allow contact before obtaining commlinks by in-game methods). I was aware of the hit for the next tech, but not for the very first one.

[Mongoose]

What about SPs? Disagreement over projects is one quick way to kill tech sharing agreements, in my experience.