Terra conqueror

I’ve been waiting for this… and graphics play little part in that. It’s no secret that I follow this game closely, and some of the less heralded changes in this version have me very optimistic about the experience a player can expect from this little gem. So what better way to illustrate the increased fun factor in IS:G than yet another AAR?

First, allow me to introduce you to my custom race. As you can see it has advantages in research, production, money generation, and space combat… however, it also has reduced population growth meaning I must do more with less.




Next let’s look at the overall game parameters. As I prefer a slower paced game, I’ve set production and research to reflect that fact. The AIs are set to the most advanced beginning possible and I have given them a bonus in both production and research. I think these settings will offer a fair contest as the AI may not be able to match my experience and understanding of certain mechanics, (the drawback in having played this as much as I have).




The stage is set and now let the curtain rise…

 

This may turn out to be a very short AAR…

I explored the systems within reach and only found two suitable candidates for colonization, both of which orbited Thagua. In a sense, they are twins, both large Desert worlds, with horrible Eco levels, at least one of them is rich though, so there is that. With no decent asteroid fields nearby, I chose overmining as my first cultural advancement and then really though hard about my second. With these settings, I considered the extra speed which serves me so well at times of conflict, but in the end chose the free colony ship, reasoning that I could always scrap it for cash if the need arises.

That turned out to be prophetic on my part, as the Militia event fired very early, I scrapped one of the colony ships and picked up the free Cruiser, after all, it is considerably quicker to refit one at these settings compared to building one from scratch. Prophetic indeed, by turn 25 I met my first neighbors, the very Humans that my Terrans had escaped from.

 

Ok, this is getting a bit tight…

Through the next 25 turns I kept busy, I hired Mickey for my Home world, Tamara to lead my fleet and provide a boost to science, and also managed to set up my first colony at Thagua. More good news when an event fired and I took a whole boatload of cash to build up my reserves, unfortunately that was followed by bad news as I discovered that the Sulak were right next to me as well.

This is too close for my taste, three empires spawning in a tiny fraction of the map… but then again my settings probably had something to do with it. Strategically I am not in a favorable spot, I can only grow my state in a single direction now as it is way too early for me to get into it with either of my neighbors

 

So a few turns later the Sulak demanded tribute, which I declined. This immature alien race offered a highly human response about attitude adjustment in reply, we shall eventually see whose attitude gets adjusted.

I went ahead and accepted trade with the tree-hugger humans and then did something I never do. I designed a very early Frigate and produced one. I reasoned I needed more ships quickly, and as I did not have any ruins nearby, I knew there was no chance of finding any free ones, (not good with two neighbors this close so early in the game). My outpost ship was also completed and I was now mining HE3, then Mr. Kataki showed up looking for work, I hired him.

A source of dark matter was discovered at the edge of my Empire and I began construction of a second outpost ship so I could exploit it, I was more interested in the scientific benefits at this point, plus the extra logistical range could be beneficial. The economy was in the red as I was losing money each turn, but at least I had a nice cushion for the time being. All this happened within the next 25 turns, it was now turn 75.

 

You have got to be kidding me.

Ok, first let me give a brief summary of the next 50 turns.

On turn 84 I hired J.E.K. Constantine and created on outpost at Isrips, ten turns later I built a very early Destroyer and hired Ruiz. The Sulak adjusted my attitude by offering a trade treaty on turn 105, talk about erratic behavior, suits them perfectly. I accepted the trade treaty and continued trying to build up.

I faced a dilemma on turn 116 as the sleeper ship event fired. I wanted and considered taking another Cruiser, but in the end I took the colony ship so I could settle Thagua I. I know, I could have colonized the planet with a colony base, but that would have taken too long, I needed to grow any way possible, as quickly as possible.

Then this on turn 119, I am completely boxed in. At least I have managed to create some “real” designs and am in the process of upgrading ships. I need to increase my navy now as much as I can because a three front war is a real possibility. The economy by the way is basically stagnant… I’ve never seen such a challenging start before, I think I’m going to like this.

 

With the strategic situation at hand, there was no question, I had to prepare for war. The uneasy peace lasted a while longer as I continued upgrading my ships and explored some systems that had come into range, but again I found nothing.

Eventually I reached a point where I felt I had to strike, better to fight on my terms I thought rather than let my neighbors continue to outgrow me. And here, I faced another dilemma. I really wanted to strike the Sulak first, but there were two reasons that I didn’t. First they had an alliance with the humans and excellent relations with them, I did not want to see myself suddenly fighting both of them. The second reason was Zarnazelum. This Moltar colony breathing down my neck made me more uneasy than you can imagine, thus on turn 175 I sent a task force of 1CA, 1DD, and 2FF, under Constantine, and attacked.

 

I wrote in another AAR that I can usually tell when I’ve won a game long before it reaches the finish, in this particular session I’m starting to get the feeling that I lost on turn one. I’m boxed in, have no asteroid mines, scant strategic resources, poor drive tech, and a single poor colony leader. In other words I am way underdeveloped for this stage of the game. It will be interesting to see if I can somehow pull this off.

Back to the present time, I have mixed news. First the bad, I was trying to build a GIC and the Moltar beat me to it, as a result, I wasted many turns when I could have been constructing something useful. (I’ve noticed in the many sessions I’ve played with this release, that even the slightest production bonus to the AI means that they will aggressively attempt to build galactic wonders, new players, you’ve been warned)

At least the good news was plentiful. I arrived at Zarnazelum and began bombing the colony so as to make the invasion easier. I was unopposed during this time and the Moltar made no attempt to relieve the system, the planet fell. Then my cousins the Humans gave me a gift… a nice brand new Battleship! You can’t imagine how thrilled I was with this turn of events.

I then followed up my occupation of Zarnazelum by destroying some nearby outposts that the Moltar had on my border, this pushed their logistical range further back and made me feel more secure. (I knew that I couldn’t hold these outposts so I razed them instead, this made the Lava-heads extremely angry)

The vile Sulak chose to take advantage of the situation and set up their own outposts where I had cleared the Moltar, thereby re-building the prison I found myself in. I couldn’t attack them as well with such few forces, so I decided to share Razistea and set an outpost there myself. I also set up another outpost at Umia, I reasoned that with Constantine’s task force close by, I could hold these systems as well.

 

We settled into a phoney war the Moltar and I, a sitzkrieg of inactivity. For my part I had neither the numbers nor speed to strike deeper, and for their part…I have no idea, perhaps they were engaged in a war with an empire I hadn’t met yet. They did try a raid at Isrips with a single Frigate, but Kataki was there aboard a Destroyer and swatted that Frigate down like the proverbial fly.

I had managed to reach enough technology levels in military areas which allowed me to design some very good mid-tech ships, but as of the screenshot only a single Frigate had been upgraded. The reason for this was a rogue Terran world I had uncovered at Melunus, I wanted to colonize this planet and my Homeworld was frantically trying to build a colony ship so I could do so.

The Humans and Sulak of course continued their expansion, between the two of them they were now the greater threat to me and I longed to end the war with the Moltar so I could focus on them. There was a problem though, relations with the Moltar were extremely bad and they refused my peace overtures, I also did not have enough credits to impose an armistice. At least, for the first time in forever, my treasury was producing a nice surplus and the research treaty I had with the Humans was helping me stay relevant.

 

You know what? I refuse to be beaten by this game.

For a while I despaired as I looked at the map. I was a pygmy amongst giants, ranked last in everything save for my fleet. I was boxed in, already at war and frantically attempting to refit my all too slow ships.

The Moltar for their part have a sense of humor. In the middle of our war, they asked me for tribute…bwahahaha.

My confidence received a huge boost on turn 260 when they finally attempted to retake Zarnazelum. I had scant forces available, but by combining units from Constantine’s task force with elements under Tamara’s command, I was able to meet them with equal forces. The Moltar ships had a considerable technological edge but their overall design was poor, (relative to my own), they got crushed.



With the battle indicating that I could indeed challenge the AI’s with a reasonable hope of success, I decided to gamble, after all, fortune favors the bold.

I scrapped my house rule and constructed a Robo miner on my home world as I simultaneously sent forces to attack the Sulak at both Razistea and Ankiea. The gamble here was that Ankiea would be hard to hold, but I was hoping to find Antimatter there so I could upgrade my drive systems from the slow Fusion drive I was using.

Not only did I find Antimatter at Ankiea, (which was not being exploited by the Sulak), but I also found three outposts on asteroid belts, two of them large. I took all the outposts intact and turned the large ones into mines supporting my Homeworld. During this time, the Sulak were also at war with the Draguul and I faced little resistance. Now, at turn 275 I’ve met everyone, established another colony, vastly increased the production on my Homeworld, increased my fleet, and am three turns away from acquiring the coveted Anti-matter drive.

Things are looking better already

 

Emboldened as I was by recent successes, I began to come to life and my natural instincts for aggression kicked in. With my drive systems now upgraded to the much faster antimatter drive, I sent Constantine to Thaams who executed a devastating bombing raid before pulling back to Umia. My intent wasn’t to take the system yet or to eliminate it, but rather just to weaken the Sulak.

Further to the galactic South, I sent Tamara and an invasion fleet to Cognaurus, where I captured the colony and its attendant asteroid belt without losses, netting Wurzite Armor in the process.

The Moltar made another appearance and attacked at Umia, again it went badly for them and I was glad to see my ships were still quite potent, (they have been in service for a while now)




The situation now is improving, and I am planning more invasions. The Draguul are pleased that we are fighting the same enemy and I now have a trade treaty with them, replacing the revenue lost when my treaty with the Sulak was ended. With a little luck, most of the Sulak Empire will be mine.

 

Along with this update, I am going to include some commentary that may. (or may not), be of interest to @Adam Solo

First let’s take a look at another battle that occurred at Zarnazelum (again).



The AI actually wasn’t beaten as bad as the screenshot would indicate. They managed to damage three of my ships and knocked one Cruiser out of action during the latter stages of the battle, in particular, they used Missile fire well, (they were using Polaris here). Unfortunately for the AI, all my ships had a single PD weapon, even the tiny Frigates. So when the AI targeted my Cruisers (and two smaller ships towards the end), I simply grouped my ships together into two formations (one around each Cruiser), and used the PD weapons on all my units to take down enough missiles to survive. In other words, while my Cruisers alone didn’t have enough PD to counter the Missile barrage the Moltar ships unleashed, the supporting fire from my smaller units made the difference.

Could the AI have done better? Of course it could have, different targeting choices would have yielded different results, they would have still lost, but I would not have come out of it un-scathed. Keep in mind that I also had a leader present, they did not. There were also some design issues with their ships, but they weren’t that bad. Overall I can say that the AI is fighting somewhat better now, I can defeat it easy enough on fights that are evenly matched, but I can no longer take down numerically superior forces, (that are more technologically advanced than mine), as I did in the past.

Now take a look at the map, notice something?




I’m not talking about the fact that I took another system from the Sulak, or that they are now greatly weakened, I want you to look at all the AI empires and then look at my own.

All AI empires have a core territory and far flung systems in multiple directions. While I understand that they look to expand on favorable worlds, how are they supposed to defend such scattered and far flung domains? Answer, they can’t.

Now look at my Empire in contrast. I could have taken more systems already, but I know I can’t defend them yet, so the result is that I have a more compact state that is far easier to defend. If there is anything the devs can do instill this into the AI behavior, it may pay good dividends.

Now I will resume my march against the Sulak while also preparing to attack the next target, I think the Draguul are getting too close for comfort.

Oh by the way, I really think the Sulak should be asking for peace right about now, diplomatic relations be damned.

 

Next I split off some forces from Werv and captured an asteroid outpost at Diph. This was huge, Diph would now act as a forward base and allow me to strike at the most vital Sulak targets in a single turn, I had my enemy on the ropes. My intent now as to wait until the population at Werv was pacified and send the rest of the units there to Diph before striking again.

The Moltar and I got into another battle, they sent a BB and 2 FF to attack Umia where I had 1CA, 1DD, and 3FF to meet them. I annihilated the Moltar ships without taking losses.

The time to gamble again had also arrived. At my Homeworld I started production of a BB. The gamble of course is that I can make do with the ships I have for a considerable number of turns, but I feel that I need more heavy ships. My fleet now numbers over 20 ships, but only 4 of those are Cruisers and I only have a single Battleship, I will need more heavy units for the upcoming war against the Draguul.

 

The campaign against the Sulak continued, and I soon besieged Gladus. It took a few turns to overcome the planetary defenses there, during which time the Sulak made some feeble attempts to relieve the system, but they were long past being a credible threat. I then reduced the population to 3 in order to make the invasion and subsequent assimilation easier, by the time I took the planet, it was in ruins. No matter, they are Sulak and breed fast.

Of course during this time the Moltar continued their raids, but they too were beaten back easily, losing more ships in the process. What I found informative and heartening through all this was that I was simultaneously holding off the Moltar and conquering the Sulak with less than half of my forces engaged.

 

The next system to fall under my iron boot was Kau. By this point, all the Sulak could do was stand and watch as I took their systems one after another. Not bad for being last in production and research by a wide margin.

My fleet had now grown to 2nd in the rankings, with the Draguul being first and showing twice my overall power on the graph. These Draguul were a problem and getting out of hand, they had just taken Sol from the humans and would need to be dealt with sooner rather than later.

 

At last, the time to strike the Draguul had arrived. I reasoned that while I could have waited longer to build up more forces, they too would have gotten stronger, so I decided to act.

The Sulak lost another colony to my advancing forces at Goth, but those sneaky lizards took advantage of my weakening the Sulak and took Zilia.

Now to the first strike itself. Normally, when I attack a superior foe, I like my first strike to hit as many targets as possible and cause as much damage as possible. However, in this case, that had to be tempered with the need to keep my forces in position to support each other. I didn’t know exactly what kind of resistance I would be facing and I decided to be a bit cautious. I selected four targets total for my opening move, here was the plan.

Attack and destroy the outpost(s) at Chilth, and then fall back, I couldn’t hold this system without spreading myself thin.

Attack and occupy the outpost at Diph, it was built an on an accretion disk that provided research benefits and would solidify my control of the system.

Attack and destroy the outpost at Goth, it had no value.

Attack and occupy the colony at Zilia, one less colony for the Draguul, one more for me.

Of course my intent was also to destroy as many ships as I could before the Draguul started to send additional units to the area, this conflict promised to be more difficult than the one against the Sulak.

It was a pity, I had nothing really against these guys except that they were the clear number one power in the galaxy. I would also be losing my lucrative trade treaty and excellent relations with them… oh well, such is war.

 

I quickly understood why the Draguul had been so successful, Adamantium armor and class V shields. In comparison, my own ships were using Tritanium Armor and class III shields. This made the Draguul ships hard to kill, but thanks to my superior offensive designs, the campaign started out very well.

Within a few turns I managed to completely destroy the outposts at Chith, capture the accretion disk at Diph, Raze the oupost at Goth, and capture Zilia star system,( both the colony and asteroid outpost there). During this time I destroyed 3 Support ships, 1FF, 3DD, and one BB while suffering no losses of my own. The capture of Zilia also netted me the Plasma cannon technology, this allowed me to miniaturize previously researched components and design a new class of ships (the ++ series). (These ships now featured Wurzite armor and class V shields, with a balanced weapons layout).

My finest battle however was at Pliopos where I caught a formidable Draguul fleet.




The losses taken by the Draguul in such a short amount of time had greatly reduced their fleet power, we were now almost even.




After Pliopos I redeployed my units in preparation for a long contest, I also started to upgrade some key units as I could.

 

Those mischievous lizards, they are turning out to be far more energetic than the Sulak had been during our war. The Draguul conducted a number of raids and counterattacks during the next few turns, some of which were quite potent. The colony at Zilia also managed to successfully rebel and I had to expend time retaking it. But it didn’t matter. In the end, I defeated the Draguul counter-thrusts and destroyed an additional two Cruisers in battle.

The main issue right now was that the lizards were employing hyperdrive which was superior to my own drive tech. This fact kept me from concentrating my forces as I would have liked, and also made refitting my ships a herculean effort. But this only slowed me down, it did not stop me.

Uclite is now the last remaining Draguul system in the south-east corner of the map, once I secure that, I can re-deploy my forces and begin expanding core-ward, I already have my eye on a new threat that is arising on the opposite end of the galaxy, the Nova.

 

Fascinating… an AI that gambles, (though I am not certain it is on purpose)

The Draguul had taken a human base at Sofiela and built up considerable forces there, now they have launched multiple attacks from that system towards the less defended areas of my Empire. In what I can only term as brilliant (and quite enjoyable), they are also attacking from the opposite end of the map, forcing me to scramble units in multiple directions at once. It is here that their accursed hyperdrive is frustrating me.

Now why do I consider this a gamble on their part? Well. over the preceding few turns the Draguul lost two more Battleships, their fleet is now smaller than my own. If I defeat these attacks, (and I don’t think there is any doubt that I will), while also managing to inflict considerable casualties on them, they will be in bad shape.

In any case, it is clear to me that the Draguul base at Sofiela will need to be eliminated at some point, I may even have to liberate Sol for my human brothers, we’ll see. But first I have to defeat these raids and send the lizards packing while also completing the conquest of Uclite.

An interesting session indeed…

 

Tha Draguul gamble was a failure, but not catastrophically so. I successfully parried all of their attacks and managed to destroy several more ships in the process, (including another BB and 2CA). Unfortunately, many Draguul ships made good their escape and I was unable to pursue them as I feared isolating my units and leaving them susceptible to defeat in detail.

With the lizard threat receded, I switched over to a slightly more defensive posture, one that would allow me to refit my ships easier. I also concluded the conquest of Uclite, gaining valuable resources and outposts while doing so. Of course the lizards, energetic as ever, set up a new outpost at Voyunus which put many of my systems under direct threat. I responded instantly to this new danger and sent a considerable task force to eliminate the Draguul base there.

With the small amount of breathing space I acquired from my recent actions, I decided it was time to deal with Sofieala. The only worry I had for this upcoming operation was that I could not get there in one turn, the lizards would have time to reinforce this system before my arrival and there was nothing I could do to stop them from doing so.

 

Sofiela fell, and I scattered the lizard forces there, destroying another Cruiser in the effort. I had been fighting the Draguul for a while now, and though I had won multiple battles and taken some of their border systems, I hadn’t really hurt them, I decided it was time to change that.

With my forces so close to Sol, I decided to strike. I fought another battle there and destroyed more enemy ships before I bombed the planet. I couldn’t annihilate the colony completely though as a huge Draguul fleet was on the way to that system. I then fell back to Trent while also sending reinforcements from Terra to Tamara’s fleet. The Draguul for their part unwisely split their forces and I pushed back towards Sofiela, defeated them there a second time, and finally moved on to Sol where I eliminated the Lizard presence completely.

Meanwhile I was still at war with the Sulak though we hadn’t fought a battle in ages. This too changed as I sent a large force under Ruiz and captured Pertinax. Strategically this was huge, I now had solidified my front further away from my core worlds and put several Draguul systems in imminent danger, no more Mr. nice guy .

In other news Yianni showed up looking for work. He was expensive and had both the greedy and envious trait, I understood why he had become available so late in the game, and though I doubted that I could keep him for long, I hired him and gave him the governorship of Thagua system.

My fleet has grown and you can see specific numbers in the screenshot. Had it not been for the time lost in refitting so many units, it would be larger still.