LTjim

Join Date 12/2008

+20

Setup Effects - the Disease Becomes a Decisive Event

In a current suicidal game (DA), I elected to try some different setup conditions.

I chose:

- gigantic galaxy (the biggest in DA)

- max AIs and max minor races

- RARE stars, clusters, abundant habitable planets

The setup put me in a corner by myself. There was one other system there but, although I was a super adapter, there was only habitable one planet there (beside the two on the Home system). I managed to get a fourth out at the near edge of the next batch, but got aced out of everything else by the fast AI colony rush at Suicidal.

The game went on, and I was enjoying a real under-dog game, having nailed one minor race homeworld that refused to surrender or trade with me, and vultured a few Thalian planets right as they crumbled in a war with another, larger AI.

The Korath and the Altairians ruled the galaxy and I instigated wars amongst them and the other AIs trying to buy time and scarf up anomalies in peace. It was looking grim, though, as I remained the runt Empire with the leaders having over 10 times my power.

Then the disease event. For any who have not had it, you have to research "Disease Cure" which suddenly appears as a Research item after Xeno Medicine. It's possibility is one reason to research Xeno Medicine, btw, or else you have to search both.

Approval crumbled to 25%, ship speed dropped, and so did ship Ranges. I dropped taxes to almost nothing to keep Approval above 40%, stopped whatever I was researching, and shifted everything to researching the cure. I was ready to decommission ships, but ended up not quite needing to do it.

IN most games, the Disease Event is just a little speed bump, and inconvenience, but not in this one. My little Empire was wounded, but the AIs were absolutely crushed.

The AIs, I believe, may not abandon researching whatever it is they are doing but, instead, begin researching the Cure as the NEXT thing. I may be wrong. IN any case, with so few planets (even the biggest Empire had only 15 - 20 planets), the AIs were helpless. Their treasuries must have quickly dropped below the debt limit triggering the loss of all production and research, the low approval killed their tax revenue recovery chances, and meanwhile their population dwindled under the low approval numbers. IN all Abundant late games, the big AIs have huge populations spread out on 50+ planets, several of which are Research dynamos. Not here.

With debt preventing research, low morale preventing tax revenue to get out of debt, and population dwindling, I saw my chance and piled every spy I had onto the economic bonus structures of the two AI threats ....

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And?!!!!!?????

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Game still in progress.

I really missed my chance as I let several turns go by w/o doing anything. Now, every turn I check the intelligence report screen where one can see what each AI is researching, how much research is getting done, and how long until the thing being researched is done.

So far, after another 5 turns or so, no research, no production, and population keeps going down on worlds with low morale.

A couple worlds had high population and stable morale due to extra morale structures and farms. I spy-ed the farms to get each of those worlds down to 6 to reduce tax revenue. I keep shifting spies onto stack markets and economic capitols on the highest population worlds. That is, once a planet gets well under 1B, revenues are pretty low and the spies have more impact on stock markets on higher pop worlds.

Of the other remaining AIs, one is an ally (Drengi - they got the Cure and are doing fine now), two or three are in the same state as the Korath and Altairians, but one (Yor) has regained production and will get the Cure next turn.

I wonder if they will trade for it?

I also sure wish I could "see" what the AI treasuries are. Hmmm, I never fully explored the intel screens - maybe I can. I'll let you know.

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qrtxian

Join Date 03/2010

+30

I've only ever seen the Disease once. It's much worse than the Plague event, but it certainly wasn't this deadly, though it did put the final nail in the Drengin's coffin (and lead to the only actual revolution I've ever seen in the process).

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The game is winding down now, and both the Drengi and Altarians have been eliminated.

The reduced population base and research base made the Disease event a heavy hit, and decisive as long as I had enough spies to keep them below the debt limit.

At Suicidal, the AIs climbed back out of the hole in about 20 - 25 turns, but emerged with greatly reduced populations due to the low morale impacts. Many worlds went below 1B, and several went to 100M or lower.

I did not react for a few turns, so I lost a lot of opportunity. When I did act, I split my spies between the two greatest threat AIs. If I had concentrated them all on just one, I could have kept them down much longer. Eventually, I saw them creep above the limit and squeeze out a little production, and then go to 0 production, then repeat, but each time they ginned out a little more research towards the Cure.

After a while, I shifted most of my remaining spies (I started getting one nullified every few turns) onto the Altarians, which appeared the greater short term threat because they were Good and I was Evil. The Korath were also Evil, so I hoped to eventually Ally with them.

A cool game.

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