game #2 of Neptune's Pride 2

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Jonathan
Grand Pooh-Bah
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Re: game #2 of Neptune's Pride 2

Post by Jonathan »

Image
Final map (little bit chopped off at the top. Sue me.)

Peijen
Minion to the Exalted Pooh-Bah
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Re: game #2 of Neptune's Pride 2

Post by Peijen »

Mostly correct, Joe and I have a brief war after I took care of Inquist, but we didn't get anywhere. Pretty much trade stars back and forth around my border, eventually I got lazy and agree to Joe's truce. Inquist's attack forced me to chase him down instead of build up against Joe, and Joe notices the build up before I had my ship pipeline setup so I wasn't able to supply the front line fast enough to make any head way. The ruin economy and Joe destroy my warp gate every time he took stars made it hard to break through the choke point. The route into his system is quiet difficult, on his side are mostly bad stars so I couldn't make good use of them, while on my side are good stars so it hurts a lot when he took a star. I figure even if I am able to make gains against Joe, once I take the lead Jon could easy attack the unprotected northern stars and make this a three way war.

So in the end I decided to focus on shooting aliens in X-Com

quantus
Tenth Dan Procrastinator
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Re: game #2 of Neptune's Pride 2

Post by quantus »

I feel like Jonathan became gate shy after losing his home world which made the advance on his territory really slow since there was not much to do tactically. I couldn't throw up a surprise gate again and jump in a bunch of forces like I did the first time I captured his homeworld. This also made it a pain since Jonathan had that much more time to rebuild ships and prepare for my next wave. His build rate was roughly equal to size of the fleets I could put together each turn. It's long hard work to bring a fleet together in this game. This slow down allowed Peijen time to finish dealing with Inquist and become too much of a threat to risk over-committing against Jonathan. I tried briefly switching to an economy improvement tactic to gain further advantage, but it just couldn't pay back nearly quick enough and Peijen giving Jonathan free research really bit into any advantage I had leaving me to go pure weapons and secondarily manufacturing and ceding all other techs. Starting to trail in banking was making my economy push moot, so had to go back to more industry/science again to keep the game at a stalemate.

I probably could've made this go faster, but I couldn't commit all my forces to conquering Jonathan fast enough without leaving myself open to invasion from Peijen or vice versa. So, my lack of commitment to one front really hindered me there. My home cluster was tighter and easier to move around in and just plain easier to manage, so I really didn't want to risk it to Peijen. I used the bad planets between me and Peijen as scouting points primarily as he alluded too. They were so crappy, he didn't see the strategic necessity to take them from me, but they were what allowed me to see his gates, while he couldn't see mine. I could leapfrog the crappy space in a turn and show him what's what. Also driving my lack of commitment to focusing on wiping out Jonathan was that I'd need to immediately defend against pj since he could drop his alliance with Jonathan any time and push through to take the gains I'd just made.

Overall, the vectors to attack one's neighbors were not even close to equal and it would've been a very different game if Inquist and Peijen's starting positions were reversed, or trade Inquist and thespineer. The space between Jonathan and Inquist was a bit annoyingly sparse. Even moreso between Thespineer and Peijen, but luckily I didn't have to deal with that.

There's also the defender advantage of knowing where to concentrate forces since they'd inevitably have a shorter travel time to whatever star was being attacked when stars were this sparse. There's a first mover advantage for the aggressor, but often other defending stars were close enough to offer support timely enough to completely negate moving first. All I could do was to try and vary the attack vectors to force the defending forces to spread out more, but it didn't end up helping too much. To contrast, Peijen was more adventuresome with throwing up gates and I had a fleet just outside his scan range every time he thought it was a good idea to put a gate up, so I could go take it right back down at my leisure.

Too bad the final map doesn't show everyone's looped orders. It would provide some insight into how people thought about the universe.
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