Subject:  Game 32 retrospective |
Author:
Mike
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Date Posted: 02:25:48 18/06/09
So I open the board to post this retro, and see the bad news about the Roma web site. Let's see, a game takes about a year to play, at $10/month that's $120. If we divide that among 8 or so players... Maybe a subject for another thread?
Anyway, as promised to Bob Schubert, here is a (mini) retrospective of game 32.
The Opening (turns 0-7):
I make contact with Gary and Storm, and the alliance coalesces. Gary wants to bring Craig in, which is OK.
Initial planet captures have very little ore. Will this be a pauper's game? But the second group captured have a couple with 600 holds worth, so things are looking better. I plan to create more trade fleets this game; in past games I’ve left too much ore undelivered. I discover that I messed up one of my commodore’s attributes, so now he has a 3/4 in something useless. :-( Planet captures are going well, and I get a comm box to TP Everfrost and see lots of available ones, but by turn 6 the planet leader has opened a big lead, and on turn 7 he captures 16! I fear the will be another runaway game for the leader. I make my initial contact with Bob, and find that he is not the leader.
The Middle Game (turns 8-14):
On T8 a blind "scan ship" order finds a DLS corsair. Odds are good it is guarding a battle station, so I need to get something near to check it out. We organize a mass scan of P7 on T9, who is our best guess for planet leader. One of the scans is successful and confirms our suspicion. Craig reports finding a well-defended DLS BS, but I don't have any available ships to join the attack. By T10 I have workshops and institutes plus a couple of colleges, so I try to get up to 4 workshops as soon as possible. On T11 I confirm that a DLS BS is at the corsair location. I decide to go after it instead of the ones Craig and Gary are working. On T13 I take my first planet from P7, and have set up to capture several others. But on T14 is the major development of the game when P7 fires on trade ships at a TP (hitting one of my bulk carriers). Now he is outlaw, and we can attack at will (which we were going to do anyway, but now he's made it legal).
The End Game (turns 15-21):
My search groups are still having good luck finding unowned planets, so on turns 14 and 15 I capture 17 of them plus several from P7. He's starting to fight back, and captures one of mine. On T16 I check the planet counts and am stunned to see that I'm the leader.
Also on T16 I have 4 workshops up plus an SA that gives +1 Eng, so my repairable ships are warping without damage. Very nice.
The remaining DLS BS are proving hard to kill, but it looks like I can get to the 15% planet level by turn 20. I check the rules and find that to win while the DLS BS are still around you have to have a score of 5 million in addition to 15% of the planets. That discovery causes an analysis of what contributes to a players score. Turns out that credits and points are the big factors. On T18 I destroy the DLS BS I've been shooting at, and find that I have 9 marauders in range of the remaining support fleets at 2 DLS origin planets, so I unleash the marauders against the DLS ships and gain a ton of points. I also build small ships for one turn (sorry Bob!) to keep my credits number high. That gets me close enough to the 5M score that I know I'll be there by turn 21. On T19 I send out the fleets for the "big push", and I bring some of the marauders in to help kill the last BS. But the BS goes down before I can shoot. On T20 I only need 9 more planets to win, and I'll be attacking something like 25, so the odds are good. I know that Bob is not far behind, and his shipbuilding program has been picking up speed, so this will probably be the only chance to get it done. And it works! I capture a net of 15, and the game is over.
I was impressed with P7's tenacity. He never gave up, and I got very tired of trying to deal with his floatillas, defenders, colony ships, runabouts, etc.
On to game 33!
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