Having fun trying to find the time to carry on building the Diplomats site. However i will do it soon. One quick question for you Slothrop, I am thinking of adding a section to the website called 'The Senate' where you could find a section that you would fill in for a proposed senate decision (ie terror star attacks). This completed form would then be e-mailed to the empire senate for their decision (to be posted here). Do you like the sound of it?
End of quote
Sounds good. Why don't you do that? It will be fun to hear why empire members feel they need to call on the dreaded terror stars. LOL
PS you must tell me how to kick butt at maso level. What was your strategy?
End of quote
Well, my strategy didn't work as I thought. I assumed I would just sell technology to the various other civilizations and run my civilization at maximum and then win through a cascading set of defections. Hmmm... Didn't work. It appears that masochist level has entirely different AI behavior. Imagine my shock when the first civilization I tried to sell tech to - what little I had because really the first shock was finding that the opponent civs research a new technology per turn and trade amongst themselves like crazy - didn't want to pay me even as much as 5/turn! Yikes. So for the first time since my first game (which never made metaverse but was on the beginner-level of difficulty) I actually traded techs vs. just selling them. I found that I had to investigate the most expensive non-military technology I could, even it if would take a boatload of turns, and then like a poor man with a bit of salted pork, try to trade up successively for a prime cut of roast beef immediately after getting the next technology and then making the rounds of all cultures until they would trade no more. This took FOREVER because everytime, I wrote down a list of all the techs (huge lists) which each civ had that the humans didn't have, figured out which ones one civ had that another didn't have and then tried to plan on paper a nice sequence of trades between different cultures. Finally, when they wouldn't trade any more, I usually had big ticket items left or small ticket items. I'd always gift any techs that I thought they would get themselves in a few turns anyways to try to keep the other civs more or less happy with me. This trading strategy got me most everything except stuff like battleships and rangers. But later, when I finally got close to some other civs, they would suddenly offer to trade stuff like one of their battleship technology for my basic repair LOL
meanwhile, my main strategy was to build constructors as fast as possible and put starbases near the other civs. But on masochist level, the AI uses the same strategy! One of the other civs ended up putting *FIVE* starbases w/o resources in one of my sectors! So I ended up with three fully decked out with cultural improvements up to 90% each (I won before I built any party palaces, etc.). On the colony front, I had a tiny abundant clustered galaxy, and I ended up colonizing all of the 13-14 quality planets, which thankfully the other civs left alone. Of course, since this was my first game, I crtl-N'ed until I had one with a cluster of stars nearby (although Sol's sector was empty except for one resource). In my first burst of colonization, I managed to colonize 4 other star systems (3 in a sector with 4 stars and 1 in a sector with one star) before all the good stars were taken. (Massively borrowing funds of course). Since I borrowed, I ended up with poor morale for the first half of the game and slow growth. It wasn't until 80% of the game was done that I passed the others in pop growth. Then by halfway through the game, I had grabbed all of the poorer but barely habitable (13-14) stars, which UNfortunately were in different sectors both nextdoor to the strongest civ (which would later build all of the best galactic trade and cultural things). This meant that virtually the entire game, I spent streaming constructors into those two sectors to keep my star systems from defecting.
Because I was so poor during the first half of the game, someone eventually declared war on me. I had to trade techs and ships for peace, and spent the rest of the game try to bribe them into friendliness.
And finally, I had to manage my alignment during the game. I had planned to be evil, but it was just impossible, given my touch-and-go relations with the other civs, so I ended up making a special effort to be good, even building more colonies than I needed just so I could get special events to tilt me toward goodness.
The game actually was about twenty times more hairy for me (as a first time masochist player) than I've described. It was entirely stressful. And in the end, I through in the towel for an Alliance win because I was the mouse squeaking and running amidst a sea of jackboots and felt that I might not last even another year, maybe not even one more turn before some of my star systems would defect to the other side - I just couldn't keep up with the constructors, EVEN with a total of 7 star systems! The other civs just had HUGE influence and had already built everything there was to build. I probably achieved a lower score than was possible because I quit too early, but oh well, this particular game was just too mentally taxing.
In the entire game, I only managed to get two galactic goods. The diplomatic tranlator and ultra spices. The other civs got everything else. I almost let diplomatic translator go because I was sure that some other civilization would build it. But for whatever reason (maybe because they were already so advance???) about 50 turns into the game, it was still up for grabs. So I decided to make a go for it and dedicated Earth, my best producing planet, to go after it. By the time I grabbed ultra spice, I had enough producing planets that it wouldn't have been such a big deal if another civ had gotten to it first, but in the case of the diplomatic translator, it would have been a real waste since at that time, I was sooooo poor.
The empire awaits the decision of one, as to his future in the metaverse. Will he join or wont he? After two days we still dont know!
End of quote
So jmforhan, what'll it be?
~SDC~
[Message Edited]
[Message Edited]
Stardock Forums
The Diplomats Empire - Diplomacy by force 
