[Stone Mill]

Excellent comments!

The most awesome part of this game is trying to hook up with your partner (who is unknown to you until you find them), while trying to keep other partners from meeting each other! So much political posturing early on, deciding whether to allow passage, share comm channels, etc... Let's just say that we tried to inhibit the other partners from finding each other for as long as possible.

Per Sparhawk:
Early in the game everyone was just friendly to each other, untill I had contact with whatsit (stonemill). He was really starting to play hard game just from the beginning (I like that! )

FYI: Whatsit was Dinglehopper... I was Mercator. He did a lot of fighting in the west from the beginning, especially against Gandalph (the Corrians). When we discovered they were partners with the Angora Fish, Dinglehopper made it his mission to try and contain them.

Per 1FSTCAT:
I didn't find my partner (Iron chicken) until about this point. He was in a fairly bad position, fighting with the Whatsits AND the Mercator.

When I found out the Ironchickens were partnered with the Poo, I made it my mission to contain them. The Poo were giving me hell, and I could not afford them to get help. As soon as the Poo established a partnership with the IronChickens, I unfortunately had to roll through them. I really feel bad about that, because the Ironchickens were very likable and on good terms. But they were totally unprepared for war, and I snatched 3 systems from them before running out of gas. These systems proved valuable, as they were taken mostly in-tact via troop invasions.

As for the Poo- what can I say? He did some very crafty things. Excellent player. Of note: use of cloaking drove me nuts. Sniped colony ships and targets of opportunity behind the lines, eventually slipped through my tight defenses and found his partner. He matched me like a chess game, forcing me to fight an early war (which I hate!) so I had to come up with strats I had never attempted before. We mostly battled in a critical system which we both knew was a gateway at the center of the map. I had to pull out a combination of mines, Weapons platforms, and fighters to keep him from knocking out my planets (and he knew very well how to counter all of these). My early invasion fleets were obliterated when trying to pry into his systems. My partner Dinglehopper did not know how to protect his planets that well, and Poo absolutely ravaged several systems and caused paralyzing riots. I did arrive in time to secure his systems and secure our homeworld.

Dinglehopper played really well, although he lost email access early in the game (along with a few turns), which hurt planning and coordination. However, We were the first partnership in the game, which proved quite impactful. We shared tech immediately, and his acquisition of Fighters, Space Yards, and Warp tech helped save my position and got us opening hiddens systems before anyone else. He found our homeworld, held his position fairly well in the middle, and did a great job of waging a long war against the Corrians.

Angora Fish (Debate) were Organic. He expanded a massive empire and kept me out of the East. Very good player as well, although, he admitted this was his first time using Organics. His empire development was superb! However, his flaw was relying solely on Organic weaponry (which is quite limited) and experimenting on some ship designs that didn't really work. This resulted in several landslide battles. At the point when he attacked me, I was REALLY worried! His forces must have had a 4-1 advantage. I had to do some really hard work to limit damage until my better warships came on-line.

Wshew! that's all for now...