The Aries War

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                                  Hello Aries Sector!

Looking like a great list of commanders!

Good Luck to All!

Aries sector sighs in relief: Borg threat nullified

Lizards revive traditional combat technique for superior assimilation.

Help!

I'm not in any battles right now (famous last words) so there's some harmless details from the first 20 turns I can share.  I knew I was in over my head playing the game so I figured I'd take risks and implement some unexpected strategies.

1.      I'm at 4'oclock on the map.  I immediately told EE the location of my HW and asked for info about a cluster to the south, or alternately, to the north.  I felt EE would find out eventually so the reward (info and good-will) outweighs the risk.

2.      HW engine tech stayed at 7 till maybe turn 12.  There are a few planets within 49ly so a warp7 LDSF is sufficient.

3.      I taxed my own clans to 70 whenever happiness was 100.

4.      Followed the LDSF with 8 Resolutes.  I was the leader in military score for a while and one hoped for side-effect was that this caused a defensive re-action by players all over the board. I think only EE knew where I was for a long time.

5.      At around turn 10 EE surprised me and told me he is to my north, suggested a nice northern border, and pointed out a Humanoid-Unity planet that was ignoring.

6.      Around 6 of my Resolutes had gone south at warp 7.   I only dropped clans on the closest ring of planets, then continued or held station without dropping clans.

7.      Worst case scenario for me is to have Robots, Crystal or Fascist to my south.   A Resolute noticed a north-bound D7.  For a few turns I debated what to do.   He eventually got to my inner ring of planets and said hello.

8.      In the return message I bluffed a bit, but included enough facts that he agreed to the border I demanded.  I was settling in for a post-queue attack when he dropped.

9.   Surged (still mostly at warp 7) into Fascist turf to get there before Borg.  Killed some Borg with help from Colonies.

10.   I admit I lost 3 ships to a dropped player :(  A Swift stumbled into a Ill-Wind, a Resolute was popped, and I accidentally sent an uncloaked Swift to a known Vic location.  

12.   Working on capturing as many Fascist ships as I can.

13.   My slice of the pie is Borg-free.

14.   Emork's ownership of the queue is like nothing I've experienced before.   Played against Dines once, he was good too.

15.   Turn 40 and I have zero PBP.  Embarrassing.

Other activities that may or may not be happening:

Jomiii battled early with Fed.   Fed on the ropes.

Emork is slowly re-forging Forger (pun intended).

Everyone is killing Borg.

Someone (Borg?) was killing Crystal ships early.

Two turns ago it looks like 2 Virgos and 2 Cubes died.  There was a mixed fleet of many races killing remaining Borg cube.  Scoreboard might tell us that Jomiii ended up owing the 3rd Cube.

• The following is 100% true. Please consider that the range of truth was changed recently to 0 - 125% (like tenacity).
• I tried to add line breaks to compensate the current formatting problems of this discussion board.
  Maybe I have to make some editing iterations to achieve good readability.
  Uh, did it now. Doesn't look so good but is readable.
  

• If a destroyed ship was traded I named the current owner.
• If no destroyer is named then I don't know.
  
• If no PBP are listed behind a destroyed ship then it was destroyed by a planet/base.
• Sometimes I had to make an educated guess. I assume more than 95% of the list is correct.

Happy turn 100, inhabitants of the Aries cluster!

Let's party!   :)

• At one spot: Lizard LCC, Rebel Rush, Pirate Gorbie, Pirate Bio, 2 x Pirate MBR
  Nearby: 4 Lizard Gorbies and a Loki within 10 LJ of the Pirate ships.
• At one spot: Bird Resolute, Rebel Rush, EE Gorbie
  Nearby: 4 EE Gorbies, 4 Colonial Virgos and a Colonial popper

Bandits at the backdoor!

Aries War Birdman Summary.

If I recall correctly:

First 10 turns

- figured I had to do something unusual out of the gate,  so built 8 Resolutes with Warp7 engines. 

- Next time I'll use better beams even if it costs a ship.  Low minerals might kill this idea altogether.

- told EE where my HW was.  Turned out he was just to my north.

- moved aggressively in one direction, found Fascists, I leaned on him a bit.  He dropped.  I think Borg took his LDSF in the SE corner was the clincher.   Maybe Jobo remembers the timing.

Turns 10-30

- worked with Rebels to build SB's in front of the queue.

- traded a DW and Res to Tristan for a Virgo

- noticed wars Robot-Liz+EE,  Borg-Colonies,   Borg-Crystal,  Fed-Priv,  Reb-Fed.

- All good news for me: Everyone else is busy, I got some Carriers coming,  I got lots of SB getting built, a potentially bad neighbor dropped.

Turns 30-60

- early Resolutes are traded away or heading deep in anticipation of the second wave of Cloakers that can sweep.

- helped stop Borg.  Then flipped and started working with Borg.

- happily building Starbases,  wheeee

- cleaned up Fascist ships with a xray*gamma bomb DW.  Netted 2*d19b, 2*D7.

- very few builds

Turns 60-100

- Start working with Borg, but a little confused about status of Borg-Colonies war, and I friendly to both.

- Gave a border starbase to Borg.  The intention was to have insurance against Tristan since Tristan was sweeping Robots mines for Liz. Emork kills a Cobol which gave me the final answer.

- Tristan responds to my SOS and starts sweeping mines for me.   We own the battlefield for a while,  but I got no firepower to make the most of it.

- I'm paralyzed with indecision

Turn 100-110

- Unfortunately Rebel dropped at turn 103.  Sev has his priorities in the correct order. Hopefully we can play together again. I did enjoy getting&sending multiple messages each turn.

-Turn 106 lost DW+Virgo to a Gorbie.   Virgo from the left side lost to a 30% damaged Gorbie.

- summary of my Rebel starbases and Tristan trades:4 starbases in front of the queue+DW+Resolute gave me 3 Rushes, a falcon, a Tranquility, a Virgo, a cobol which  together with a DW ended up killing 1 Gorbie(Rebel got the PBPs), one LCC, ill wind, and the fascist HW.

- I fall under Tristan's protection.   Give him a SB in my core cluster. Tristan could have crushed me at any time, but didn't.

- d19b's keeping EE+Liz fleets from attacking?

Turn 131  - I'm in Miami International airport and briefly get wifi on my phone.   A message from Tristan saying "that couldn't have gone any better"  

I'm supposed to be focusing on a presentation but I keep wandering back Aries.

Turn 139 - EE offers to betray Lizard, but I have to let him escape - into my area - from a big ion storm.  

I don't want to ruin this potential game changing move so I agree.

Turn 145+ - EE actions differ from betrayal behavior but I can do little to stop him.   Eustache, I have no hard feelings.

Turn 152 - a second big mistake.   Maybe 50 turns previously Tristan towed a SSD that had zero fighters. 

So I used PBP to build a 2xay, 8 gamma bomb DW.  It towed a second SSD, but lost to the dozens of fighters he had.

Turn 153 - a third big mistake.   A DW has surrendered at a Crystal SB.  

It’s a danger for Birds,  but I've only done it one other game.   After this I hardly spent any time on my turns.  Just staying alive vs Eustache's Gorbies.

So, there it is.  The game was over before these f-ups, but I still feel crappy about those 3 mistakes at the end of the game.

Realistically,  the best I could hope for in a Champ game is to finish second or third by finding a friend.

If Fascist didn't drop I would have been in big trouble, maybe the first race killed.

McKone laying webs to cover Emork's back door was the deciding factor.  We might have pulled off a comeback if it wasn't for the webs.

Emork, Tristan, and Jobo are elite players.  It was an honor to play with them.

Other comments:

Re EAQC aka MBC

Not for me since it seems like work, not play.   Maybe I'll build a Merlin once or twice if I can't build something useful.   Congratulations to Emork for pulling it off.

 re tenacity: I happened to be high on the tenacity ratings when this game started. I've only played for a couple years and thought this was how the game should be played (never drop). 

Possibly Fascist and EE saw it and gave me elbow room.  It's working against me now because there's no droppers anymore (joking).  As Birds I liked the easy victims.

 To future Champ game invitees: if you're the type of player who makes too many stupid mistakes, then don't play.   Go practice some more.

To other Birdmen players:   I don't know if you'll learn anything from reviewing my turns.  Maybe you'll pick up some bad habits so be careful.

I certainly made a pile of mistakes.   If you have a question post it starting with "Birdman question" and I'll give you my 2cents (along with Bacchus, Othrym, MJS, and a few others.  Or send me a message and I'll try to answer the best I can.  

I'm right about half the time:)    Don't put xray on anything infiltrating.   Don't put xray on Swift Hearts, unless it’s a money transport.

 To Joshua: thanks for the opportunity.   Eventually the ranking will mature.  The cream will rise to the top for all races and middle of the road players like myself won't get so high on the leaderboard.

To Othrym:    Avenge Me !!!!

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  !!!   Long live the Lizard King   !!! 

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shhhhh

vive la resistance :)

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