Are you tough enough to be the "King of the Hill"?

[Slynky]

Rathar said:
After a seriously fun game, in which I reached the lows and the highs, I have been defeated.. I "think" I could do successful guerrilla warfare and drag it on forever but with two hammers smashing through my empire and having just had my only hammer broken upon Slynky' anvil I recognize my defeat!

It was a tough game and you put up a better-than-expected game considering the amount of space you held. Actually, you managed some good economics! My ships had a hard time hitting you, it seems. Most every fleet you fought was trained to 20% but not every ship was fully trained as they had to go out early to fight against you sometimes . As I figured it, there couldn't have been more than 5 racial points difference in our setup but when I couldn't hit your light cruisers and would lose 15 (or so) ships, I decided ramming with weapon ships was better than doing hardly any damage at all.

You got off to a better starting place than I did, that's for sure. Looking at your starting home worlds, you had 3 good warps out of one and 3 good warps out of the other. On my side, one of my homeworlds was placed at a dead-end where the only way out was to go through the other home system. That sucks! My links to the inner ring took longer to get to than your links did but we still set up defenses pretty fairly.

The map was tough. Bigger than I expected with, probably, more that twice the number of systems a standard KOTH map has. The defensive line was tough to manage as, I figure, we had 5-6 warp points between us that needed guarding and with no mines, it meant one didn't have to build the obligatory 100-sweep capability to be sure of getting through any particular point...a really tough game.

You did well. I would ask other questions but I don't want to give away any of your playing style.

[Glyn]

Slynky,
Looks like I am your next challenger. Since you don’t like the colonizing and early tech phase of the game. I would suggest the following game setup conditions.

5 Good planet start
Manual placement.
Medium Tech start.
No Mines
No Intel
No Colony Tech.
No Stellar Manipulation.

Since there is no colony tech the randomness of the map shouldn’t give a major advantage to one side or the other.

[Slynky]

Glyn said:
Slynky,
Looks like I am your next challenger. Since you don’t like the colonizing and early tech phase of the game. I would suggest the following game setup conditions.

5 Good planet start
Manual placement.
Medium Tech start.
No Mines
No Intel
No Colony Tech.
No Stellar Manipulation.

Since there is no colony tech the randomness of the map shouldn’t give a major advantage to one side or the other.

I guess I will always show how little I know about the game here in "public" but just how does one play without a colony tech?

[Alneyan]

I would recommend a "no Alneyan as game creator" setting too. I screw up all the games I host for Slynky, while not screwing up any of my other games. I even managed to screw up twice last time, with the map (somewhat annoying) and the "no mines" part (very annoying).

Multiple homeworlds are pretty much random, so even though your starting points *were* balanced (with the WM layout anyhow), the other two homeworlds can end up pretty much anywhere. That's why I tend to use the bigger small maps when setting up games with multiple homeworlds... though I must have used the Medium setting for this particular game (or I changed the maximum amount of systems, which would have the same result).

No colony tech could mean removing the other two colony techs, but I feel a better option would be to switch on "Cannot settle colony types other than your native colony type", therefore allowing you to pick any of the colony types.

[Slynky]

Alneyan said:No colony tech could mean removing the other two colony techs, but I feel a better option would be to switch on "Cannot settle colony types other than your native colony type", therefore allowing you to pick any of the colony types.

When I first saw it, I wondered if it was a setting where you started on a certain homeworld (no matter) but you had no ability to build any colony ship yet till you researched one of the 3. But I don't think the game can handle that.

Then, I wondered if it meant that you could never expand past the original 5 colonies the whole game.

I must confess, I'm at a loss.

[Slynky]

Alneyan said:I would recommend a "no Alneyan as game creator" setting too. I screw up all the games I host for Slynky, while not screwing up any of my other games. I even managed to screw up twice last time, with the map (somewhat annoying) and the "no mines" part (very annoying).

If you don't have time, then that's fine. I understand your worries but when asking for someone to take the extra effort to set up a game, we need to be thankful for that (even if there have been glitches in the past). If you feel uncomfortable, then I also understand and perhaps Geo can be persuaded to do it if he's not too upset with me on our last debate.

[Renegade 13]

Alneyan said:
No colony tech could mean removing the other two colony techs, but I feel a better option would be to switch on "Cannot settle colony types other than your native colony type", therefore allowing you to pick any of the colony types.

Slynky is correct, there is no such option that does what you are describing. The closest option is one that restricts the empire to only colonizing it's own atmosphere type. Only planets breathable by that empire would be able to be colonized if that option were selected...and for a KOTH game I think that would be a very bad idea.

[Alneyan]

The option I was speaking of is namely "Players can only colonise home planet type", right above the thing about atmospheres (both don't necessarily go hand in hand). That's what I had in mind when I read Glyn's settings, but he could have meant something else indeed.

I can give it another try Slynky, if you insist. Like I say, fifth time is the charm! (Okay, fourth perhaps) Send me a final mail with all the settings written plain as day, all in bold and caps, with the biggest police you can lay your hands on, and it might just work.

KOTH will be updated in a couple of minutes.

[Slynky]

Alneyan said:I can give it another try Slynky, if you insist. Like I say, fifth time is the charm! (Okay, fourth perhaps) Send me a final mail with all the settings written plain as day, all in bold and caps, with the biggest police you can lay your hands on, and it might just work.

Will do. Thanks. I appreciate it

[Will]

I'm not at a computer with SEIV at the moment, but I distinctly remember two options restricting colonization: Only Colonize Home Planet Type, and Only Colonize Home Planet Atmosphere. The first forces a player that chooses Rock planets to start to only colonize rock planets, and the same with paper planets, and scissor planets... err... ice and gas planets. The second allows you to colonize only the "green star" worlds.