[Jtownsend]

Well, the game has progressed nicely and is now in the 80s turn-wise, at a turn a day, more or less. There were two dropouts, which unfortunately did tend to affect the play balance, as people were using stock AIs which tended to die abruptly playing against humans, even semi-inept ones. The leaderboard has turned out to consist of me, a warlike race to my southeast, and oddly enough my neighbor, quite new to the game, who I was originally kind of trying to support as as proxy against an aggressive AI player. He did a lot more than survive, and conquered the entirety of that AI and was well on his way against another - the two dropouts, in other words. I have been the number one empire for the entire game; this has a certain calming affect. I also had agreements with all of my neighbors - TRs with the two normal states, and an off the books, somewhat tenuous cold war with the warlike neighbor.

I tend to honor agreements, and at any rate didn't trust any of my allies enough to turn my back on them and deal with the warlike state, which I had seen as the greatest threat. I believe he has now fallen to either the third rank, after a long-time spot at number 2, or else 4th place. Meanwhile, I had to cancel my TR with the AI-conquering ally, to try and forestall his taking an economic lead.

On the advice of other players in the game I didn't focus a great deal on economic facility upgrades earlier, which was a bit regretable. I believe that between racials, ship design, and attention to stats and training I have probably always had the best fleet, and one unmatched in numbers - but fleets don't give you much return on investment in peacetime, except for peace of mind, of course. For most of the "cold war" I had about 30% of my fleet on the warp point with the cold-war neighbor, but slowly began shifting to a balanced deployment as the rankings changed.

My initial thought, because I had agreements with everyone, was to research SM, close all of my warp points, and set up warp points from one central fleet mustering-and-training world to each of my systems, for the best possible 'interior lines' in the event someone opened a WP into my empire. I've also secured a house rule against black hole generation using one system's sun to destroy another, so hopefully people would have to put more work into blowing me up than that.

However, relations with the former TR ally began to become strained - I didn't really want him to leave our frontier unguarded, because that let him conquer the second AI faster, which was no help to me. So I wanted to cultivate a little paranoia, but not enough to bring about a war; it struck me as bad form to stab an ally. I realize that's a bit 'carebear' to use diplo terminology, but I have a reputation as an honest ally in games, and it seems like good policy. At any rate, what I was afraid of came about a turn or two ago - he moved into the lead. Now, I have researched Monoliths III, and moved on to research better research facilities. And it's only 80/250 turnwise, so I could possibly do very well with a monolith economy and ringworlds, especially since most of the other players aren't all that experienced with the game. However, he started asking me not to attack him in a way that made me quite uneasy - like someone saying nice doggy and looking for a rock. From the number one empire, that didn't strike me as healthy. If I got part-way into a high-end stellar manipulation path without researching better fleet techs, building ships, etc, I could find myself a low tech, underproducing victim of the big boy or big boys.

So, somewhat regretfully, and with less premeditation than he's likely thinking - he seemed to think I've been preparing for war since I broke the TR - I've moved into his space. Although he has two empires conquest worth of experience, he also doesn't seem to have done a lot of online reserach into things - so, while he has twice as many worlds (around 80) as I do, and a good sized fleet apparently built on battleships, he apparently didn't know about weapon mounts. I haven't engaged any of his decent ships yet, just blew apart a shipyard ship that must have just reached his frontier.

I've only got 40 or 50 ships moving in, which is less than his total - but they are also fully fleet trained, indifferently ship trained (I had them on garrison duty, ship training is hard), with very high combat racials, and with ECM/Comp III, PPBIV. There are a few BBs into the mix with the same type of technology, but we're talking maybe 8 with more on the way; the rest are light cruisers, but all updated to the 2 latest designs. Most have one Solar Collector 2, I never got around to better and wasn't sure how many resources to waste on that when I wasn't conquering stuff.

The real disadvantage I'm facing right now is total inexperience - I noticed in the one battle I've fought, my "Break Formation/Wall" setup led to the BBs being left in the dust by the light cruisers; is this a problem? Is there a solution that isn't worse than the problem?

I'm in 3 fleets, moving into 3 systems, if all goes well glassing a half a dozen worlds when the next turn gets run. I would dearly like to be conquering instead of glassing, but as this isn't a premeditated strike I had (rather stupidly) economized by scrapping all of my transports ages ago, and I had no combat troops that weren't very old. I've never dropped troops before, and don't even know how many I need to beat a usual planet's militia. There are minesweepers on the way, transports and BBs on the rails, and 5 or 6 extra fully fleet trained ghost fleets massed in one of my systems. I'm moving reinforcements through that world and picking up ghost fleets as I go.

Again, as it wasn't premeditated, a lot of my industry is going into switching to monoliths and just now upgrading to better research. All of this is perhaps a bit poorly timed now that I'm in a major war, but I'm loath to terminate projects before at least the existing construction is finished, since the ships won't arrive for a few turns anyway. Propulsion tech is Counter-Terrine 3, perhaps a bit low but comperable with my current foe.

Diplomatically, I should be ok. My opponent made a bit of a gaffe by very angrily threatening to surrender - before he fired a shot, as the number one empire - to the number three power. I can see how this is a clever tactic for blackmail in a sense, but very much against the spirit of sportsmanship. It has apparently irritated the third place player, the one I was long in a cold war with - and we had at any rate agreed to a reasonably comforting policy of mutual non-aggression. If that holds there should be no realistic threats to my rear, which is still home to half my fleet or so. The game mod ruled that such a surrender was inappopriate and said he'd rewind the game if it was tried. I have yet to hear from my opponent - who I couldn't have a civil word with, really - so I don't know for sure if he'll quit, or be replaced, or what.

If his ship design indeed includes no mounts, and depending on his training and support/sensor use, it may be a walk. I have very strong space combat racials and he has none - in fact, I don't like his design much at all and will probably seed his worlds with my people whether I conquer them or recolonize. I would very much prefer to conquer, but if it becomes a walk it will be very disconcerting to leave good worlds in my rear while I chase down his ships... for now, at least, I am leaving planets on the target list, as I can afford to glass a few.

My warp closer ship is 3-4 months from completion, my warp opener is more than a year away. Both are the first level of development. Anyway, this has been quite a book, but I haven't posted in a long time, and it seemed interesting to me at least, and perhaps useful to lay out and think about as I was writing it. I credit my position in large part to having read up on the game here, and to the very useful help of Douglas, SJ, and several others. Thanks again. Further comments could be crucial! I may always be overlooking the painfully obvious; to wit, I only have level 1 shields. I just never had a research priority for them, and I was sitting on my own shipyards, with which I figured I could repair armoured ships. I'm aware that shields are very good at high level, and that Grav protection against SM stuff is at level 10... But so many things to reserach. I'm at about 130k reserach off the top of my head. I should likely have upgraded from (cringe) level 1 facilities a long time ago... But I used to be a very well developed empire, back when my rivals didn't have twice as many worlds. I colonized and rebreathed comparatively earlier than my competition, and my lead is only now vanishing.