PBW "newbie game"

[BeeDee10]

You could've _asked_ what those space stations were. The Irha-Nrr tended to be very open, the only reason they ejected your cloaked scout ship was becaus you were being so suspiciously sneaky about it in the first place.

I built that nebula base because I'd misremembered which of the red nebula bitmaps was the "100% impenetrable" one and figured it'd never be seen, so why not? It was something I'd never done before in a "real" game, and I figured at some point in the far future if the Narcisston colonies immediately behind it got trashed I could use it as an emergency subsitute resupply point for my defences. Phoenix will vouch that I haven't even sent scout ships past that system since my first mapping foray in the first year or two of the game, he's been my partner the whole time and would have seen.

As for the victory conditions, I really didn't care who was first or second or whatever; I just wanted that year of peace to come about as soon as possible. The only time I ever care about the score when playing is when I'm worrying about triggering MEE, other than that it's a completely abstract and pointless number IMO. If you were so concerned about finishing that final year in "first place" I'd have been willing to gift you stuff until you got your wish. It's easy enough to pump your score to dizzying heights by just building big empty ship hulls.

I guess I was just RPing this one too much. That's why the subjugation treaty, too; I figured it'd buy the Irha-Nrr as much time as possible to continue stashing those "archive pods" all over space so that after they're destroyed there'll be a better chance they'll be able to restart again in the future. If you want to declare victory and end the game at this point, I'm willing.

Got a new race already playing a second game now that's explicitly intended to be RP-centric, so perhaps I'll do a little better. I'll be more careful about my defences this time, too.

[The_General]

So do we continue with the game under these new situations? Or are we declaring victory to DragonLord? And how does the end of the game process proceed? Do we continue playing out the turns or does the game just get closed?

[CaptSpoogy]

That Dragonlord - he's just mopping up former first place Nostropholo in Newbie I. I'm not sure if he's going to turn on me next...

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[Phoenix-D]

Two players- I hit the finished button, the AI should take over.

As far as the end game goes, your guess is as good as mine. I think "peace" means everyone wins though (damn that sounds trite )

Phoenix-D

[BeeDee10]

I'm willing to keep on playing, I guess there's always the chance of something unexpected happening. But at this point it all seems to be a matter of mopping up; I don't think I'll be able to build up enough equipment to do anything significant in a year's time, and there's only a handful of AI systems remaining to be pacified. Phoenix has devastated himself quite thoroughly too, and though the Tzeech may have good tech they don't have the resource base to do anything spectacularly disruptive (unless you're hiding a couple of sunbusters in there or something

[Dragonlord]

Beedee, I'm sorry, I guess 'm just more of an agressive schemer than you are :-)
No hard feelings? I sure don't want to get a reputation of a backstabbing schemer, I'm in another PBW game with 10 humans (now 5 left) and you can check there that I always stick with my allies. Although in that game I am now on the receiving end of allied betrayal... Hmm I did scheme there against my neighbor though, with two other humans against him. But he was just being too naive to trust me too far.. One thing I learned from that other PBW game is the concept of "checkerboard alliances" meaning that in such a crowded galaxy, your neighbors are your natural enemies, while the next neighbor over is your natural ally, and you always try to scheme with the next guy (so position 1 and 3 in a 1-2-3 line-up, cosmo-graphically) against number 2.

Oh, two more small things came to mind about Newbie II: BD, you complained about the destruction of a Xiati homeworld. But I just checked, for instance in Lundra there are two gas giants with 4000+ population, presumably ex-Eee homeworlds, under your control. If I click on them, I can't see of which race the population is made up...
So in the case of the homeworld in Tyrik, for all I know it contained Irra-nur settlers (which were an acceptable target within our role-playing constraints).

You also mentioned earlier you did not buy my excuse for the war declaration, the "military coup" that went on within the Dragon regime. I was trying to set up the roleplaying for that earlier, hoping I had given you enough hints. Remember the Messages about a faction in my government being pissed off at you for "policing the galaxy" ? And that I was barely able to keep them in line? That was a prelude to the military coup :-)

Oh and if score wasn't important to you, weren't you playing to win? What was your ultimate goal (outside of roleplaying) for this game?

I must say, you roleplayed well, consistently, and it was a great deal of fun. I have never spent so much time sending lengthy Messages to other players. I hope you enjoyed that as well, and once again, I hope there are no hard feelings. (No sore losers :-) We can start a new game where you can hand me my head on a platter

[BeeDee10]

Oh, no hard feelings. I guess it's imposible not to feel a _little_ miffed when after 20 days or so of work one's empire gets trashed so quickly and completely, but in the final analysis it's just a game. Well played.

The Xiati world was large with an oxygen atmosphere. If it was inhabited by Irha-Nrr, it would have been a domed colony and could only have held a population of 960M. But there were about 4000M present, so they couldn't have been Irha-Nrr. I guess it's an understandable oversight, but it happened to be an Irha-Nrr emotional hot button. When those people were wiped out was when I rolled over and gifted you everything; the Irha-Nrr would do anything to protect those lives, including surrender.

Probably why the Tzeech figured that planet was of such strategic importance to me.

The thing I "didn't buy" about the coup was that the general who took charge afterward was the one who was wholly responsible for the attack on my territory; it was clear you'd massed those fleets on the borders for a while previously (including in Vintidrin right after we'd agreed to make it a demilitarized buffer ). I'm assuming of course that you were laying the blame for it on him; if not, then the misunderstanding was mine.

As for my goal, it was only what the Irha-Nrr had been spouting off about to everyone the entire time; I just wanted everyone to live in peace with each other and not commit genocides and stuff.

Now that the surprise of my stunning defeat has worn off, I think things wound up ending quite well all things considered. I've developed the "character" of the Irha-Nrr quite a bit more in this game than I did in all my previous single-player ones, and I think that in my next revision of them I'm going to record the events of this game in their general history.

It would probably have wound up a bit of an anticlimactic ending if we'd just mopped up the AIs and then run out the clock, after all. I'm just sorry I wasn't prepared enough to provide more fireworks in the finale.