Herodias

Join Date 03/2007

The Great Galactic Diplomates (Korath@ToA@Obscene@Medium)

Somewhere in space a Petunia said "Not again". Somewhere else in the universe - or maybe in a different universe alltogether - at the exact same time a Korath said "Not again!" too.

Yes, the Korath Emperor knew that feeling all too well. A Higher Power somehow is dumping them on a planet, takes away all previous knowledge about technology, culture and all possessions. Then they are supposed to struggle for domination of the galaxy they are in. And eventually they usually are getting exterminated by some crazy Thalans on steroids...and sometime later the cycle starts again. And now was the time again for that....The Korath would play their role as usual...as if they had any choice there.

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settings: medium map, most everything at "common", Slow research
participants: Me as the Korath against Torian, Drengin, Terran, Altarians, Arceans, Korx + 8 Minors
difficulty: Obscene

I had already selected my usual "Thalans"@Suicidal when I thought "not again!" and picked the first race that somehow got into my eyesight. I picked the Korath, never really played them before (never during ToA and I think once on DA for a non-serious-game). I just knew that the Spore-stuff is "cool"

But my bravery left me when I had to take the decision wether I want to do my first ToA-suicidal with a race I had not played before on ToA and barely on DA. So I went with Obscene...

My plan: not falling too far back research-wise while agressively taking worlds from the others asap, so at some point I simply can surpass the others in research due to my larger amount of planets.

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Year1

I admit that I hit Ctrl-N like 2 or 3 times, but quite soon I got that starting position and the prospect of having 1 Minor directly beside me (I tend to invade them asap) + a precious military ressource which I expected to need urgently, made me take this galaxy (there were also some stars around me, which made for some promising colonization-targets - minimap-stars were unfortunately turned off when I took the SS)

Afterwards the not too exciting Colonization-phase started, where I felt the major difference to the Thalans: whereas I pumped out a Colonizer with the Thalans every 1-2 turns, it took me 4-5 as the Korath. But considering this, I did rather well...imho

After half a year the colonization-phase was over for me and by then I had already build 2 Ferry-ships which were in non-stop-action flying my people around.

There were 2 class4-planets nearby (the 2 planets SW of my Homeworld). I only colonized 1 and left the other for soembody else, as I expected to get this soon due to cultural flip anyway....and I needed precious production capacities for some constructors.

Most noticeable: As other people reported in the forum, there seems to be a clear tendency that there is a class26 always nearby the player starting position...for me it was the middle one of the 3 lined-up planets on the SW-boarder of the map.

My flagship discovered an economy ressource early on within Torian space. (SE) So building a constructor early became a priority. Well...by July it was about there..and I got the ressource.

Right at this time my flagship dicovered another one of those a bit further out to the North. At this time I had to make the decision wether to run for that or take the Military ressource. Seeing that my economy really was extremly tight and that hot wars were probably still quite a bit down the road...I decided to gamble for that second economy ressource.

In the end I won it by 1 turn - a Torian constructor was 2 tiles away- ....and the Terrans got the Military ressource. I considered that as kind of "temporary lease"....I would get it someday....I hoped.

My research was first concentrated on engines (Impulse drive for the speed bump) and some other stuff.

As I wrote in "tipps and tricks" in the strategy board I set my research to "Spore" whenever my flagship was about to explore a "Civilization Graveyard". So I got 3x25% pushes for that and in the end had only to research that for only 10-15 turns. Afterwards I started ToxicWorld2...and there I got lucky with Creativity. Got the tech after 3 or 4 turns already.

Already at this time I started buying techs whenever possible. Namely Trade + Advanced Trade from the Korx as I wanted to sell Trade to all Minors and wanted the Traderoutes asap for positive relations.

So by October/November I invaded the first Minor planet....which kindly had started to build Econ capital.

The UP decided on something stupid like "starbases ought to assist allies". Well, I didnt care...I didnt plan upon making any allies anyway.

My research developed quite desastrous as you can see in the small chart in this picture.

Instead of "keeping somewhat up" I was the worst researcher by far. Ok, in the tech rating I wasn't that bad, as I traded quite a lot of techs and didn't do too bad in that regard I think.

something I find funny here: I had played Thalans exclusively for so long that I for a few times made the mistake of naming my ships "Tha_*" instead of "Kor_*". So I ended up with an fleet of "Tha_Spore"-ships

****

"Oh the joy...we haven't met the Thalans so far. Are we truly supposed to stand a chance this time around? But...things aren't exactly looking bright. We are widely considered to be the village idot of the galaxy, and I admit it here...currently I have no real plan how to deal with that. But please don't tell our fellow Korathians about it."

****

aars

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Year2
First I did my usual stuff: pushing for some tradegoods. I got what I always want to have: Eys of the Universe + Harmony Crystals + even managed to get Diplo Translators. Terrans got Restaurant of eternity very soon though...no chance for me to get this, even though I like to have that too.
Situation was meanwhile looking gravely on the military-side and I was -as expected-already hated by the Torians, Altarians and Terrans.
In November some exceptional event struck....Some economic boom sweeped through the galaxy raising tax income massively. From that moment on my main issue was how to burn the cash always when I got to over 20k. First of all I increased the spy-production, producing 1 every turn for a while.
And last but not least I started developing a plan: I had money and I had quite a decent diplo rating meanwhile...where to go with that...?
First step: bribing the Arceans to go to war with the Torians...as they scared me massively

Briefly after the Arceans declared war also on the Korx...which wasn't really written in my Master-Plan, but I didnt care too much either.

Here's a Screenie of the situation at end of Year 2. You can see the charts for economy, military (uh oh) and population (I was impressed by myself there

)
The war wasn't really "hot" yet, but the first Torian ships have arrived in Arcean space....so I at least knew they would take this serious and hopefully keep off me.

****
"When one of my advisors came to me a while ago and told me that I should use DIPLOMACY (another stupid invention of those wicked Terrans) to get what I want...I ate him. he should have nourished himself more healthy...he tasted crappy. Nevertheless, I ate him. I had to make an example of what happens when you come with sissy-proposals to me. A few months later I was in despair though and so I tried that Diplomacy-thingy on the Arceans. And ..it worked. What I needed most was time. Time to include all those Minor-race-planets into my empire. Time to somehow close the technology-gap. Time to build up a military worth calling as such. Time, I just needed more time"
****

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Year3

UP decision was to give Constructers 5 min speed. I always like that

Latest here I completly abandoned (or at least delayed) my game-plan. My military at the beginning of Year3 was a joke compared to the others. The only bright sight was that ALL of them used solely Missiles at this point. So I hastily researched Missile-defense techs and stuffed my inadequate ships with those.
The insane income (net-income soon went up to ~5k per week) allowed me to achieve several things:
1) I built a massive armada of spies. Once I had ~25 I made a massive move to get my spy-ratings up: In a first step Torians+Altarians+Terrans each got 7-8 (At this point I also mentioned that the Terrans had a 700%-production-tile (MUST HAVE!!!) and the Torians had the 700%-research-tile, but built a bank on it (WTF???). I lost almost all, but got spy rating to medium. Afterwards the other races followed. So I always knew where their ships were going.
2) I dragged more and more of them into wars against eachother.
3) I bought whatever tech I could get my claws on. And they sold me almost everything: The Arceans Harpoon3, the Drengin our joined Slave-thingys, the Korx Master Trade the Altarians and the Torians Pop-growth-stuff and research-stuff. and lots of other stuff. I also got most of them to give me some one-way-treatie. Only with Drengin and Arcean I did 2-way-treaties, as they liked me anyway, didn't have too many planets and we doing well military-wise regardless. So I wanted to leave them alive until last when breaking treaties wouldn't matter anymore anyway.

I used the diplomcy screens so often and intensively, that there were quite a few times where nobody of them wanted to talk to me anymore.
By November 2229 I had achieved my major goal: I set up every war I could between them, while I myself haven't fired a single shot at a major civ yet. I had taken all Minors by then and my military was comming up nicely.
As they kindly destroyed almost all their starbases -and I had purely by chance (hehe) - positioned Constructors there, I took 'em all: Influence, military, 2xresearch and another econ. Only the Torians kept their Morale+Military ressource starbases as no enemy ship had managed to get into their territory yet.

Something odd here: There was no way whatsoever to create a war between Terrans and Altarians. Both had according to the treatie-screen just trade-contacts, but still both even didn't show the option to attack the other. That frustrated me some....

Around that time my first Battleship-sized ship left production - and at this point I had by far the most powerful ship in the galaxy. 4xPsionic Missiles + Warpdrive + whatever defense against missiles I could squish in. (Also had managed to build Hyperion Minimizer by then). It was like shooting with cannons at flies.

And before the year was over I completly exterminated the Terrans within 2 weeks. Well...they barely had any ships left anyway.
I got this pearl, which was the reason why I took the Terrans first:

700%-tile, lots of IS's, Quantum PowerPlant, ManuCapital...
As I had just bought the necessary tech to get Aphrodisiac....the planet got to work on it right away.
****
"That Diplomacy-stuff is great. All those Lemmings blow eachother to pieces. Nobody will call us the Village idiot anymore. Instead....I just got the first calls from our old buddies where they offer money TO ME! Hah! how times change. Well, I got some more lessons for them comming. Thank you, whoever you are, you 'Higher Power' for granting us the entertainment, the joy, the pleasure. I always trusted in you being a firm believer in Korath-strength! Also I want us to build a monument for that advisor of mine (what was his name again). Write something on it like "For one of our greatest minds - who had a foresight matched by nobody. He left this world much too early. We mourn the loss forever"
****

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Year4

UP brought another stupid event: Freighters are protected now. Who cares...I'm the only one with any left anyway.

Here's a screenie of April 2230: The Terrans are long gone, all minors taken over, the wars still raging ...and me in the akward situation that I will win an Influence victory in under 10 weeks.

A month later or so the economic boom is over. And I Prepare for my next victim: the Torians.

Here's another screenie of about June 2230 where I'm 1 turn away from attacking the Torians.
My fleets are in position to take out their mining starbases at once and build them up immediately again as my own.

The AIs had to pay dearly for their stupidness.
I fed them with massive amounts of money during the econ boom. But all they apparently did with that was buying ships (I guess).
Briefly after the boom was over, the manufacturing of ALL AIs took a serious dive. Look at the mini-map on the last 2 screenies, it shows the production.
Altarians + Torian already took the hit, and the other 3 did follow soon after.

1 month later I had taken over all but 1 Torian planet (which I simply let up until it eventually would defect, so I could stay in a state of war for longer) and would take on the Altarians next.

But admittedly the game currently is won. I guess I could push for it and get rid of all others in 3-4 months at most. I have 2 massive production planets, 2 more medium and a ton of profit-making, still nicely productive worlds. I still run at a healthy surplus and still could increase taxes a lot if needed (>92% approval again after the econ boom is over, during the boom I put taxes high to get full benefit of the "event")

But...I plan to drag the game out and get a Mega event hopefully. JK would be boring this time. I have a ton Spore Ships around with great speed. Economy would take a hit from all those pop-zero-world and my Ferries would need a bit to populate them, but I could live with that. Peacekeepers would be cool as I never had them. And the one that hits evil civs badly might become interesting. never had this one either.
Well...I will see if I get granted my wish. If not I guess I will regret not having started this game as a "suicidal" one.

If I get no Mega event I think it's fair to say that this was all-in-all an easy win and this will be the end of this AAR in that case.

Here we are where we ought to be. The galaxy is basically ours. We got ships everyone else can only dream of. We transferred countless worlds from ugly, green, wasted smut-balls into wonderful toxic worlds. We have the money, we have the slaves, we have the food. All is ours. Yet....that we had to settle for such cheap, terran-invented tricks in order to achieve what we have achieved leaves a bad smell somehow. Nothing beats having your ships blast other ships to pieces. Yet...there were some funny sights getting those reports of an Arcean fleet which evaporated a Torian fleet just to get destroyed by some Korx ships which eventually died when attacking a Altarian-world where eventually all population was killed by some invasion force of the Terran...who eventually fell to our wrath alltogether. Well...there have certainly been worse times for us."

1 question I got: I remember from the 1 time I played Koraths on DA that you could gain techs when doing Spore-attack. Did this get cancelled somewhere along the way or do I remember that wrongly? It's all fine though...game would have become much more boring much faster

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A correction for the text of Year3, as I can't edit anymore:

Something odd here: There was no way whatsoever to create a war between Terrans and Altarians.

Was supposed to read
"Something odd here: There was no way whatsoever to create a war between Terrans and Korx."
Terrans were nicely in war with the Altarians, but both Korx and Terrans didnt want to war eachother. No clue why though...

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"Somewhere in space a Petunia said "Not again". Somewhere else in the universe - or maybe in a different universe alltogether - at the exact same time a Korath said "Not again!" too."

I laughed out lous when I read that.

"A Higher Power..."

That would be you, I suppose?

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