Best/Worse expericence

[Nscaler]

I love swapping "I remember when..." stories. I just don't have any yet. So hows about the rest of you? What's your best and/or worse experience playing SEIV?

As I said I don't currently have any but I'll get this started with couple stories the buddy who got me hooked on this told me.

Best:
His tatic that game was boarding parites when he encountered a race that put the anti-boarding explosive charge on every ship. So he made huge fleets of light cruisers and was taking the enemy's hugh ships out left and right.

Worse:
Sending a rather large fleet to rescue a remote colony and watching in horror as it plunged into a black hole.

[dogscoff]

I would say my best and worst are both from my current vsAI game.

I'm playing solo 1.49 no mods, large map, not all wp connected, medium number of AIs on high difficulty & bonus. My race is methane/ice.

So far the only races I've met are the Terrans and the Space Vikings. I established good trade links with both but the unconnected warp points meant that territory was limited and soon a 3-way war started.

The Terrans were sandwiched between me and the Vikings, so I decided to use the Terrans as a buffer: The vikings were clearly winning against the Terrans and I had spent nearly all my research on developping warp point technology.
I put almost all my ships and satellites into defending my one exposed warp point and let the Terrans occupy the Vikings' time until I could research enough military technology to fight a war.

Worst moment: In one turn, the vikings wiped out an entire Terran system in one turn - their final system and home system, which was the only thing between the Vikings and my warp point. All diplomatic contact with the Terrans was lost. *In the same turn* the Nordic bastards waltzed through my warp point defences as though they weren't there, wiping out my entire fleet and a massive group of satellites *with no losses of their own*, leaving my entire empire exposed.

In the next year or so they conquered 2 of my systems (about 35% of my empire), glassing some planets and conquering others with troops.

Best moment: Only the turn before, the stupid (or desperate) Terrans had sent a coloniser through the heavily defended warp point into my space. My first reaction was to destroy it, but I had a better idea: I let it through. The following turn, the rest of the terran empire was extinct. They had a few carriers dotted about, but their Last colony ship was in my space, with a turn's head start on the Viking invasion fleet. I let them come deep into my territory, allowed them to colonise a planet and then demanded their surrender.

I gained a population of oxygen breathers, rock colonisation tech and fighter tech. The first two of those allowed me to expand my resources within my shrinking borders enough to support my just-built stellar manipulation fleet. The fighter tech allowed me to slow the Viking advance long enough close a few strategic warp points and to consolidate my empire to the point where I am into a viable defensive position.

Once I have finished my warp point defences (I would consider cutting myself off from them and then re-establishing contact as a friendly to be cheating), constructed/ colonised a few more planets and built up a decent attack fleet, I plan to start making lightning raids with my warp point openers: Appearing deep in the heart of Viking territory, conquering unprepared worlds, stripping them of population, units and facilities, then abandoning them and disappearing.

I shall be revenged...

Things I have learned from all this:
- You might think you're well defended, but your enemy may surprise you.
- Sometimes it pays to be nice, even to your enemies.
- There is such a thing as a successful tactical withdrawal.
- and never, *ever* underestimate the Space Vikings.


Seriously though, no other game I have ever played comes anywhere close for this level of involvement and the subsequent sense of loss / acheivement.

[chewy027]

So I start a game with 19 handpicked AIs on high bonus and high difficulty. I also pick small universe and allowed to start in same system to spice things up a bit. Unfortunately for me my neighbors in the planet right down the street are the TDM Sergetti. I put up a descent defense for a while but after 20 turns my homeworld and all ships are destroyed...except one colony ship. In the midst of all the fighting I managed to build one colony ship that made it out of the system alive. I moved as far away as I could before my fuel ran out meeting lots of other unfriendly races on the way. I eventually found a system that hadn't been colonized yet and low and behold it had a planet in it that was suitable for a new homeworld. well to make a long story short, about 500 turns later I finally got my revenge and reclaimed my true home system. That game was definetely the most fun I've played. Knowing I was on the brink of defeat and coming back to win made for a great game.

[ZeroAdunn]

Best experience:
One time while playing SEIII I had conquered about 1/5 of the galaxy. I was at war with every other race in the galaxy. I had a ton of stabases defending my one warp point out of my space. Suddenly I get attacked. Literally hundreds of ships came through the warppoint at once. Fortunately they split up and I was able to stop them. With each victory though I took a little more damage. Soon they had fleets of thirty ships at a time coming into my space. Eventually my main defense fleet was smashed. They crushed their way through every my next two systems defenses, I watched as more and more ships piled into my spase, and then when it looked as though most of their ships were in my space. Defense plan B: Destroy the star. Sure I lost my planets, but the people died for the empire! This went on through all of my space untill just one system was left. One ship, a mutha class carrier, stood in orbit of the capitol of that system, and then a fleet of twenty waships entered into my space.... then turned around and left. They never returned to finish the job. I rebuilt my fleet back to its glorious standards, rebuilt my defenses, and quickly moved out. Five Mutha carriers and various other ships on the move. Because there was nothing but asteriods most of the way there wasn't that much trouble going the full length of our once glorious empire. By the time we reached the outer edges we found that steller manipulation had alread began. We sloughtered those few ships still in our space and quickly established a resupply base. It was a long hard fight after that, but we held the line reestablished our great empire.

[bearclaw]

Best Expeiance.

I had found that the computer became too easy for me after sevearl single player games of SE3 and then SE4. Until one day....

I had started a new single player game with maximum computer players all set for maximum difficulty. I started to explore from my homesystem only to find that of the 3 wps out of my system, 2 of them were blackholes with unstable warp points. Lost 2 ships just discovering that. The third went to a dead end system with only 2 planets I could colonize. After fully colonizing what I could, I began trying to break out of my gravity prison. it took 2 repair ships, 2 colony ships one transport, and one suppply ship for each unstable warp point before i could continue to explore. When I got through the first (losing a lot of population, both colony componants and only one repair bay), I discovered that on the other side of the only other warp point was ANOTHER BLACKHOLE!!!

Eventually, I made it out of the double blackhole route. The other black hole lead to a nebulae before entering a normal system. That's when the fun really began.

I think the game was nearly 10 year into it by this point, and the best I had were destroyers, virtually no weapon techs and very little of anything else. The very first empire I encountered were not only hostile, but were using battle cruisers! I later found out that they were the underdogs of the galaxy. I was so far behind ALL the computer players that it became the first challenge I'd had in a long, long time.

I eventually won the game but only because the Pratorians were merciful and became my allies.

Nick (bearclaw)

[BeeDee10]

My best experience is somewhat similar to Chewey's. Back in SEIII, I started out in a system at the end of a long, long string of systems. My empire grew along its length, without encountering anyone else along the way; I had plenty of opportunity to build up nice infrastructure and defenses, and just about the best defensive arrangement of warp points one could have (an enemy would have to slog his way through my systems one after the other, in sequence). At one point a spatial anomaly threw one of my colony ships to an unoccupied system somewhere else in the galaxy, and I promptly set up shop, but that happened just before I finally reached the end of my system chain.

There was an AI-occupied system right at the first intersection blocking my expansion. First ones I'd met and it was already well into the game. I tried opening peaceful contact, but they refused my offers and attacked like slavering Zebrankies.

Boom... boom... boom... A massive AI warfleet was coming down my corridor of systems, slamming its way methodically through every layer of defence and exterminating every planet along the way. I was stunned; I'd been building these defences and systems for a long time now, and the only thing slowing the enemy down was the fact that it was a long road for them to travel. I got increasingly desperate as my linear empire burned down like a fuse. Finally, they tore into my home system at the end of the line, where all my non-combat ships had retreated to in a massive exodus fleeing their advance. Cornered, trapped, with billions of refugees in the cargo holds... no mercy. The slaughter was incredible. When the Last planet died under the whithering barrage, all contact with my exterminators and their allies was lost.

Leaving only a stunned and horrified population of four million colonists stranded out in some unknown distant corner of the galaxy on their little rocky colony world. I quickly discovered that that system was one of five belonging to a small disconnected group, explaining the loss of contact with everyone when the Last planet in my original empire was lost. Since it was still relatively early in the game, I didn't have stellar manipulation tech yet; I was stuck with what minimal resources I had right there. But conversely, that meant that my enemies couldn't get to me either. They didn't even know any of my people had survived; they probably thought their great genocide was now their own little secret, never to come back and haunt them.

It would. Oh yes, it would. I threw myself into research, working my way to the top of stellar manipulation with a monomaniacal fervor, and built and mothballed a huge supply of warship hulls for use after the eventual breakout.

Which I eventually did. I opened a warp point to the same system I had first encountered that AI, blew it away with a starkiller, and then began putting _it_ through the same meatgrinder it had put my people through. And once I was done with it, I exterminated its allies. And then everyone else in the galaxy, just for good measure.

I love it when my people go insane with vengeful rage. I usually play such a "nice guy" race that I never get to do stuff like that.

My worst experience was probably the time when, having conquered an entire SEIV galaxy except for one race in one heavily fortified system in a remote corner of the stars, I decided to switch over to playing that race against my now-victorious one for a real challenge. One turn after switching, I am informed that the star of my one system will go supernova in 3 years. Not much I could do at that point but evacuate as many people as I could and then gift away the transports in hopes they'd be resettled someplace safe.

[capnq]

Worst was probably the education I got in my first PBW game:

Things started off well enough, slow expansion, fairly early contact with my two neighbors. I made Trade & Research treaties with both, and continued expanding until I ran out of colonizable planets. My neighbors had a Partnership treaty and "Show allies score" was on, so I knew they were in 1st and 3rd to my 4th (of 4, no AIs). I notified 1st that I was planning to expel 3rd from a system we shared, then ordered 3rd out of the system. I expected 1st to be too busy holding off 2nd to assist his Partner.

I easily seized the two occupied planets in the disputed system. Immediately thereafter, I was shocked to see 1st's Stealth Armored fleet decloak in one of my home systems. I managed to destroy his fleet, but not before one world was glassed and two others Plague Bombed. I spent the rest of the game on the defensive, scrambling to research countermeasures and steadily losing worlds. I would have been taken out sooner had 1st finished me off himself instead of letting 3rd "liberate" the system I'd started the war in.

Best would be my second PBW game, 8 humans and 4 AIs. Intense diplomatic juggling, staying neutral in two intrahuman wars while I ground down the Piundon AI in a third. First time I ever convinced an AI to surrender. Spent most of the game climbing in rank by mopping up the wreckage left by the leaders, who were fielding the largest and most technologically advanced fleets I'd ever seen. When we finally decided that the war-weary survivors were ready to declare galactic peace, I'd climbed to a 3rd place finish. That game also included a fleet engagement that had so many seekers launched that my screensaver kicked in on four consecutive turns of the combat replay.