Vanilla

It was a real pleasure to play in Vanilla, in many respects. First, everyone that played in the game was a new player to the site. Although some of the players could have been weak, the fact that people did not know each other meant that there were no allies at the onset. Quite unlike many other games, where players create alliances from the start of the game, and then gang on strong single races. Second, Pick, our charming host, was at his best! For the first time I get a home that is in the proximity of not one, but 4 planets! Third, he decided to make my day by placing me right next to Gil’s favorite races – the Evil Empire. This is how it went.

I was at the center top of the map. The location of the races I came across was:

Me Crys Rebel

EE Fed

Fasc Borg

Turn 4 brought two important events. First, I found a planet two turns from my home with 8 mio Gyps Representative population. Second, the EE gave me an excellent chance to determine where his home was. Quite surprisingly it was only 298.5 ly away. Next turn I put a second base on another Gyps planet right next to my home and left on vacation. I was replaced by Yaroslav Lyah. My instruction to him was – develop and move on the EE.

With his games going full speed, and mine on top, his free time was taxed, and he took the development task seriously while playing only lip service to the war with EE. So when I resumed command at turn 17, I had 3 ugly SSCs only 2 turns away from my home, and one turn from my one and only money-making planet. Yaroslav has forgotten to move the money to the home, so there were about 11,000 mc on the planet with only 2 Eroses on guard (actually hissing). My home was guarded by 2 T-Rexes with Mark 7s. The rest of the fleet were a couple lousy LCCs, bunch of hissers and several large freighters.

Frankly, I thought I have lost. Had the EE taken my money planet, I could not have taken it back as money and minerals were quite low at my home. After telling Yaroslav what I thought of his rule (there were very few positive words I used), I overtaxed my home population loaded as many minerals I could find on whatever ships were available and sent them home. I sent one T-Rex to the money-planet in the hope that the EE will divide forces, and I will have the chance to save it. I threw a small mine-field on his way to my home – it was too small for serious damage, but any damage to his ships was welcome. I sent the turn preparing myself for the worst.

Turn 18 arrives, and to my surprise, the EE advanced just a bit, and did not attempt to take any of my planets! He was probably waiting for minefields! Ha, if he knew how poor I was…. He chose to wait for another of his SSCs and an SSD. Thank god my LCC got the 1% chance of cloak failure and battled over an EE planet with his SSD. It died, of course, but damaged the SSD to 65% which guaranteed that the SSD wouldn’t move anywhere (the planet had only 1 clan and no supplies).

The overtaxing of my home population created deep discontent among my subjects that even my hissers could not calm down. But the added money was used to produce one more T-Rex. Throwing a large field around my money-planet, I loaded 10,000 mc on the T-Rex and sent it home.

Turn 19. Four SSCs are circling around, only 1 turn from my home. But he didn’t attack! Had he done so, I would not have had a home. In the meantime, I am building T-Rexes. The one with 10,000 mc on board is only 1 turn away.

I also prepared a NUK trap on my second base (as I mentioned it was right next to my home). Four hissers, instead of hissing, were hanging above the planet with NUK fcode and no fuel. Two T-Rexes are guarding my home, another one is being built. I am starting to get ready for the show.

Turn 20. All four SSCs fall into my NUK trap. The base is killed, of course, but the planet remains mine. An SSF is on the way to help the 4 SSCs. EE is getting serious about killing me. But, now I am feeling strong with 4 T-Rexes and a horde of mcs. With advice from Vano, my teacher and inspiration, I devised a devilish plan to kill the SSCs without losing a ship. I set each Eros to tow an SSC. Two had to tow in the warp well, two in different points in space. Two T-Rexes were set to intercept those towing outside the well, while one T-Rex flew to the planet with a kill mission – to take care of those SSCs still on the planet (since towing in the well was at warp 9, they fell back on the planet). One T-Rex stayed guarding the home.

Turn 21. Everything worked like a charm. Four dead SSCs, not a single ship lost among mine. Ironically, the EE player named his ships – Die First, Die Second, Die Third and Die Last J. Well, almost all died first, but at different locations. EE did take a planet of mine with the SSF, but with only that ship left on my territory, his attack had no future.

Turn 22. The SSF was killed by a T-Rex. The planet taken back. Far away from these battles, a lonely LCC explorer captures a planet, along with a large freighter, from the Crystal. That totally demoralized the Crystal and he quit the game.

Within the next 10 turns, I heated up the economy. That, in turn, allowed me to churn out T-Rexes and Madonnas every turn. The weakened EE had no chance of surviving, and that player wisely evacuated to a far-off planet in the face of my attacking T-Rexes. Shortly I took the Crystal home. By then I knew I was going to win, and spent the rest of the game just building lots of bases and ships. The last 5 turns, I barely played – the lead was too great to bother and sweat.

The ship limit was VERY late. It was only reached at turn 45!!! It was really getting painful to build all those ships. After turn 35, and particularly after the ship limit, I was too lazy to build good ships and excelled at building LOTS of Eroses. Most of the good ships, particularly the 6 Merlins that gave a good boost to my economy were build around turn 25.

REBEL: Real fighter. Exploded towards the end of the game. Restless – wanted to kill the Fed, had some thoughts to destroy the remnants of the Crystal that I was too lazy to touch, and, if I am not mistaken, had some desire to do away with the Robot. At some point wanted to fight the big boy, i.e. me, and gave me a probe. In the last 5 turns moved from 4th to 2nd place. Earned my respect.

COLONIES: Ai, ai, ai! To be 2nd for most of the game and move to 4th in the last 5 turns is not good. Even with the Robot and the Priv on your tail. Missed a couple of turns and went straight down.

FASCIST: Good diplomat. Came into an agreement with me to kill the EE but never sent the big ships. Limited himself with pestering. Never took the opportunity to take care of the poor amorphous around him. Built very few bases, despite facing no war situation. For most of the game occupied the bottom part of the table. Should have done better.

EE: Man, with my replacement’s poor play, if you only had the guts to attack my home with those 3 SSCs, the game would have been a lot different. Don’t read too much stuff from Gil. Building an early Gorbie or (in your case) all those SSCs and SSFs, is a sure way to hit the gutter. When you lost them, I had a booming economy while you were out of breath, and couldn’t even put a lousy mid ship to counter my heavies. You should have gone into diplomacy with the Fascist. A couple of poppers would have saved you from my cloakers. Then you should have expanded west (I found so many great planets there), built lots of bases, and put reasonable mine fields. In mid game, you should have built 4 Gorbies and taken my whole herd like this:



BORG, FED & PRIV: Pathetic.

CRYSTAL: Tz, tz, tz, tz. Just one freighter and a planet (although a good one) and you quit a game. How about big webs? An occasional Diamond? You don’t like having LCCs and T-Rexes?

ROBOT: Congratulations for the 3rd place. He was too far from me to know anything, but that he killed some Colonies ships.





Thanks very much all players for an enjoyable game. Thanks Pick for hosting it, and although I was mad as hell when I got that 1% cloak failure, it turned out to be such a benefit J.