TOURNAMENT 4 2009 "VANILLA" - NOW OFFICIAL!!

[dx_chaos]

Hi all

Just a quick report on my tourny game versus RF. The game ended at turn 104 with victory for RF

Game was T5 Med, ring, imposs, few - I choose Roms and RF took Cards.

This was same as in my earlier game with Carcher and I had hoped for similar setup - e.g. to be nice and close and go for the jugular early on - unfortunately i found myself at I2 - completely out of range of RF who was at G12 i think. In between us sat the Ferengi and thats were the early action was.

Somewhere in first 15 turns RF made his one mistake - a nebula sat between him and where he wanted to go - he took most of his fleet in - but unfortunately for him i was already there! I didnt have many ships in there - a couple of BC a destroyer and a scout but i was able to take a good whack of HC for my money!!

Undaunted RF built himself a nice fleet and it soon became clear we had the same thing in mind - conquering Fergs! We met around turn 40 and when the dust had settled i was left with 6-7 experienced BC.

RF retreated and I should then have taken a decisive advantage - unfortunately for me (or perhaps due to poor execution on my part) I had three unsucessful invasions - one on Ferenginar and 2 on one of its systems. i did eventually take the other and a couple of smaller ones but i think my chance had passed. RF had wisely shifted his focus to the Feds and - well out of my range - he had them for breakfast!

I still had a decent fleet and maanged to get to BC2 but was unable to get a decisive blow in. I focussed on getting range and had just achieved this when guess what? RF got his HC2!

RF had built up a very nice fleet and I knew the game was up. My approx 2 WB, 27 BC, 4 destroyers and couple of scouts fought a good battle but RF had approx 44 HC2 and 15 scouts. With my fleet decimated I knew the game was up.

RF played a great game in great spirit and I congratulate him on his victory - Maybe next time!!!

Chaos

[ruthlessferengi]

DX-Chaos and I had a game. He chose Roms, hard, round, some? Minors… I decided to forgo neutered Klings and chose Cardassians. BTW, for future tourney, we should allow klings Kvort cloak until it turns second generation… IMHO… otherwise, they are a significant disadvantage…


So I ended up plastered at 6 pm on the map… Researched up and down, watched the graph, and thought I figured out where roms were without putting my vessels out too far. Guessed wronged. I was delighted to see ferengi at my upper right mid screen. saw parkleds and acamarians, subjugated them and got dil planet in the middle of the screen once roms discovered me at turn ?8…

No serious intel, as we both feverishly built. I thought I was doing well, had 6 tts lined up and 8 HC1 ready to go to the ferenginar campaign when I ran into 2 battle cruisers and 5? Destroyers… in a nebula… after he discharged his first volley, I had 2 battered HC1 left and half breathing destroyer… then it was payback time as roms got beat, but still â€" I lost 6 HC â€" he 2…

So solicited some more cash from Ferengi and build some more and hastily went on to park over a sister ferenginar planet with 9 HC and 6 tts.. That’s when I had a déjà vu all over again. There was I, sitting with my rears exposed when he uncloaked with 9 BC1 and basically laid waste of me… I lost all, he ?2, BUT by some luck all my tts survived. This embarrassing thing happened to me more than once before (Chris did tryi to teach me a lesson before) I don’t seem to learn well…

There I was with 6 Tts and nothing else… So I decided to go way west and fortunately federation was at 9 pm, along side with betazed… I solicited some stimulus money from the ferengi, rebuild and in prompt order had sol and it’s two sister planets conquered. That was real estate that I could play with… I was lucky, sol was out of range for Chaos plus I created all sort of show that I still wanted ferengi etc..

I was really hoping for Chaos to just get on with the Ferengi business instead of setting on Interpol search all over the universe looking for me…
I three relevant Fed planets, Betazed was now membered by klings, pop 325, so I got it too, which was fortunate… Feds got back at me and took my center map dil making planet, which I could not for some reasons take back…

I thought I was unlucky â€" Chaos had a terrible time trying to organize Roms to take over ferengi and he told me later that he could not do it for the life of him â€" failed invasions… It all worked in my favor, as Feds (now my friends), Klings and Ferengi all wanted my 27 HC1 to protect them from Romulan menace… Well, I was researching HC2 as well â€" thanks to Feds -, raking in money from all three AI.

While I was rebuilding, at turn ?75, he shows up and takes over my planet closest to ferenginar, Parkled… I get my tubs and move in his direction, he pulls his 9 HC back ( I am thinking 9??), take Parkled back only to see 27 BC II sauntering in my direction…

I knew that one on one, cardies will lose, so I pulled all the way back, pressured my investors, got some more cash and turned out 46 HC1 and 20 odd scouts… I upgraded, scrapped 2 ships to keep -3000 balance covered and moved into offensive…

He decided to take a stand. By then he took both acamar and parkled, as well as my old dil center system. He had 27 vet BC2 and 2 WB, plus ?10 destroyers…

We had a battle, and 17 of my heavy ships survived. So that gave me some breathing room to go and take over ferenginar and build some more heavies. Chaos decided to give up, but I think he could have mass produced say… 25 wb and a few strikers and I would have had a tough time taking him down…

It was a fun game and I thank Chaos for that. Tough fella, but I got lucky.

[ruthlessferengi]

One of my favorite players on this forum is Carcher. We start our game, joke around, chew tables together and generally have a good time. No pressure. This time was not different except I had to distract him longer than usual. Carcher chose feds I and I went with Ferengi. And he sat right on top of me…

So, between chit chat and joking around Carcher allowed me to build 24 raiders and upgrade them… I was lucky he did not build 9 heavies and pound out my planets at turn 20 to dust, or came out with a cloud of HD2 to ram my fledgling fleet of vipers……

We had a couple of battles, I had my upgraded raider 2, build a 9 heavies and TTs and moved on to sol. I stole some money from Carcher and in the end we had our battle as he moved his fleet to protect Sol. Raiders totally rocked and we agreed to cease hostilities after Carcher’s gracious surrender.

[carcher]

yup a really enjoyable game and great banter,he may have won the battle but i think i edged the war of words ( we should have points for that too ) but most of my comments are unprintable on this forum.
i made many mistakes ,the biggest one - leaving 9 hd's behind when i moved the rest of my fleet i just closed my eyes while the"orange ball of death" did its work.After that it was just a matter of time,and time soon caught up with me,i was in the red, being raided ,a last hd was stuck in the shipyard and i even lost a heavy crusier bombing a system
And so we met for a scrap and i got ***** **** *************

nice game ruthless good luck in the next round mate

[jonboylondon]

Just wanted to say congrats to Trev who conquered my mighty empire in turn 73 on a T5 small ireg - he was cardies (grr) and I was roms..

Was a neck and neck game and was a lot of fun I have to say.

Good stuff and I hope i get a chance of a rematch soon....

Carcher... it looks like plate time for us mate !!

JBL

[trevtones]

Congrats to JBL on an interesting game...

I picked a small map, T5, impossible with some minors. He was roms I was cards.

We started out pretty far away and didnt actually meet each other for awhile which was what I was hoping for. I had the feds below me and started demanding like crazy they gave me 20000 credits and the fergs to my left gave me the same I think.

I had the luxury of starting right next to the trill so I quickly conquered them to get their research structure and extra dilithium, my plan was to dodge JBL until I got HC2. I never felt that my space was threatened, he never really had range on me, so I decided to wipe the federation out and use SOL as another shipyard closer to his space. I was also in a massive credit deficit which is usually the case for cardies so the federation systems looked like money bags to me. My first invasion of SOL was unsuccessful and I lost 7 TTs, I wanted to toss my laptop out the window but cooler heads prevailed and I just rebuilt my TT's. At around the same time JBL had also lost a bunch of TT's to the klingons, his was due to a reorganization of his ships by the comp. So this worked out evenly for us.


After finishing off the feds I got the morale boost and was about 5 turns away from HC2, I decided this game had gone on too long and prepared to invade romulus. He had just finished off the klingons and I had no idea how strong he was, all that I knew was that he didnt have bc2 because I had a scout in romulan space and could see his uncloaked bc's rolling off the assembly line in romulus. I sacrificed the scout to find his fleet and saw he had 24 bc1's and 8 fast attack, I had 20 Hc2's and 9 fast attack so he met me for the final battle.



The battle lasted 4 rounds but I eventually won!

Good job to JBL and I'm ready for my next opponent. Mickar, fatigues that's you! :-)

[jonboylondon]

Well here is a little write up of my game with trev with a few pics as well..

I started at the very bottom left of the middle and very quicky bumped into the klingons who were 4 spaces away. Bought my ships and parked them next to klings but they gave me nothing...so i dec war and conquered a nearby minor the bandi...

I met the fer and got 30k from them with them being middle left top - and met feds right hand left side and got bout 20 k as well.Then dec war and conq malcor as well.

From here on i wanted to build as much as i could and go for klings...

Cardassia was all the way over the other side so i went to conquer the klings at first but as trev mentioned i lost all my tts after comp - rearranged. I must admit i was a bit lost what to do so i decided that i had to conquer the klings asap as trev was near done with the feds..

I did so despite the ferengi sneakily trying to do they same...one turn i think or two after trev did the feds so again it was close till this point...

However as trev said he made the right move coming for me as he got to hc2 before i got to bc2...

Well done trev...

[trevtones]

I guess the ferengi sort of shielded me but you destroyed that pakled outpost a few times, I had a solid chunk of the galaxy to work with. It's interesting seeing it from your point of view!!!

Cardassia was 3 sectors above the neutron star.

I had to take Norpin to get range on romulus the space in the centre was pretty barren.

Good game anyways, I had fun!!!

[RSE_Dissy]

wow 75 turns and jbl didn't get BC2?

[trevtones]

Just finished my 2nd game of the tourney against mickar or Mr.botf or whatever you want to call him....lol

I lost!

I picked T4, cards, med, irreg. He picked rommies (surprise surprise). Nothing went right for me in this one. I started out sandwiched between the feds and fergs so I started demanding from them both and got about 30k. I was also intelling the fergs for about 2k every turn. But it wasnt enough. I had no dilithium until turn 19 when I finally conquered the talarians. Then I sent a TT to conquer Caldonia as I was trying to get DestII, this was a mistake and a waste of resources as I found out later. A few turns after that I met the romulans who immediately started brutally intelling me. I bought the thinktank clicked turn and it was bombed by romulan agents. Then I was going to scrap my colony ship to buy it again but he sent two scouts to take it out. At this point Im broke and getting intel'd like crazy, he had a few minor races that helped his intel quite a bit!

Our fleets eventually met up for a final battle. 8 Rom bc's vs 5 Card hc's and 8 fast. I won this battle the first time around with 1 HC and a scout left over but it turns out that my opponent crashed and I was playing the AI. 2nd time around he won the battle and I regrettably had to retire.



My biggest mistake in this was not warring the fergs right off the start and trying to get Caldonia turned out to hurt me in the end as I could've just built research structures in ferg systems. You live and you learn!!! :-)

I think a better strategy would be to build more cruisers and be patient for the dest2 as card cruisers can ram pretty good against rommies.

Good job Mickar/Mr.Botf

[mickar]

This is the map view of my game with trevtones after our battle turn 29.

As you can see, I started just left of middle with kling to my right, fed above me, card top right and ferg far right.

Normally in t4 games I would conquer the nearest major while researching my destroyer upgrade and just make as many destroyers as I could before upgrading and battling my opponent.

This game was different as my nearest major was kling and I hate conquering kling in t4 as you will most likely fail on 1 attempt and I didn't feel like losing 9 tt or so and having to do it over again while my opponent is easily conquering fed/ferg.

Turn 1 I met Ullia and saw that kling was near so my strategy changed to searching out card and using superior intel to stop him from upgrading. I intended to chase card and force a battle before he could upgrade.

At the beginning I made a couple cruisers and just scouts to locate minors/majors and see if I could find card. I was abit lucky to find ktaria 2 squares diagonal from my sister system to which I promptly took and used the ktaria ship to moral boost each turn. I also found Tama 2 square from ktaria and also took that for the research.

I had to make an outpost to my right to get enought range to find card. I found him around turn 20 and immediately started intelling him. I had about 1450 intel with 100% sab bonus, so was confident he wouldnt be able to upgrade as it would force him to intel defend and not research.

I colonized a system near card and went to bomb talor when card came to defend. Our battle was not with many ships as you can see but was, as always, decisive in botf. Even though I had only 4 cruisers near card left, card did the right thing by surrendering.

All told I got 30k from demand which enabled me to buy the bonuses on ktaria/ullia/tama and my intel attack turned out to be the turning point.

Thanks to trevtones for a well played game, I enjoyed it and look forward to meeting him in the knockout round.

Below is the retire screen at turn 30:

[trevtones]

I think the spike in the middle is when the intel started happening?

Something significant...

[mickar]

I think the spike in the middle is when the intel started happening?

That's where I got my demands. I got 20 1 turn and 10 the next. Getting money will cause those spikes.

Experiment in single by upgrading a shipclass then scrapping the upgraded model for the money. Your retire screen will spike.

[ruthlessferengi]

anybody saw Torrad around? we gotta have our game dude:)

[dx_chaos]

A quick report on a fairly quick game

Torrad selected t5 irrreg, med, some, hard and roms - i couldnt decide between card and kling so took card - bad choice!!

After a couple of restarts we got goin - i found myself in middle of map quite removed from all AI but only 4 squares from Rom!

I should have focussed on my opponent but instead started messin with Fergs and Feds -trying to intel them and get some money too - instead i found myself being intelled by Torrad!

Got a second dilith but even that didnt help much - i was short on credits - could not get much from AI - so i made a very vain attempt to conquer one of his systems with 9-10 HC 13 scouts/destroyers - though that i might at least wipe out some ships. Instead was faced by 19 BC - I think he lost 1 ship

Not my best game but congrats to Torrad - he played well and deserved his win

Chaos