3V3 Replay

I heard about your leet strategy.

Yep was a fun but frustrating game to play. Watch the replay and see me, BetaAlpha, swear and shout at my allies!

Incidentally the game lagged and froze towards the end followed by a client crash for me . This was even more frustrating as the enemies' fleets were depleted and as Ron suggests there may have been a small come back.

BetaAlpha

One enemies fleet was depleted, the other was being fragmented trying to defend multiple systems and attack others -- my culture forced him to garrison each system he took to prevent me from taking it back. And he still had to advanced to take out that culture. Between multiple cap ships "raiding" his forces -- especially wherever his forces where weak -- and a fleet of support vessels "in construction", I had the potential to turn it around. Especially if I could take back my volcano world, and have my fleet cap really boosted -- I had the economy to churn ships out, I spent the first half of the game developing it!

Yeah I noted your progress. What really sucked was that blue also lost most of his fleet and just as I typed in a fit of surprise "Bloody hell I've nearly taken out his fleet", the game froze then crashed Sods law!

Actually my fleet wasn't depeleted at the end of the game I still had 5-6 capital ships remaining and around 45 frigates.Plus I had more capital ships and mass frigates building and rallying to my asteriod belt.Lharrs was dead as I just took his last expansion off his second HW and I wiped out what was left of his fleet at the belt...I was also killing beta who was losing alot more then me.I caped two of his planets and was at his HW destorying his stations behind his planet.He didn't have much of a fleet left anyway..seeing as I was about to send the rest of my forces there to finish him off faster and you Ron were the last challenge to overcome lol..yea you had resources and the ability to produce ships but at the end you were engaged with my ally and he was winning.Wouldn't of takin me much to send a portion of my fleet and start harassing your planets...But hey that match was awesome!I thought we were going to lose after Kiit died.But hey we pulled out the win.all in all great time and great match.Everybody played well..-Kirk.--Admiral Kinz

I've given this a lot of thought, and I still think there needs to be some limit to how much culture spread can stack. It was impossible for me to beat it. If I moved forward, you would've just recolonized, if I kept leaving bits behind, you would've been able to pick them off with your small forces. There was no way I could've "rushed" you efficiently, everything was covered in broadcast centers and my forward base was a dead 'roid that I couldn't do anything with.

I don't know, I think that's a bit much. The only thing I could do was wait for Kinz to finish with the pretty much dead-in-the-water players and attack you from two sides, but even that would be very very slow.

It's one thing to have culture as a valuable and viable addition to your empire, but it's another when it completely stalls the entire game. The only thing I really could've done was scrap all my labs and built up tons of media labs myself, but that should not be necessary to deal with culture.

Maybe it the presence of capital ships not only slowed culture spread in friendly territories, but actually helped your culture along in neutral territories it would be more balanced. I still would've had to stay at the Volcanic for a pretty long time to finally make it colonizable, but at least I *could* have done it.

Still, it was a good game and everyone fought well.. even if you were cursing me Ron for not allowing the majority of your capitals to escape

The game had a good deal of Vasari vs TEC action, and I was pretty pleased with Vasari performance overall!

Your forgetting, for all intents and purposes thats exactly what I did! I had several planets with pure broadcast structures, and maxed out broadcast research. Of course it was hard to push through it -- you were facing superior numbers with (I think) superior tech. Actually, once you took that asteroid from me, I suspect you would have started pushing my culture back at least a little -- if you'd taken that second asteroid, (where I had another 5 culture centers) you would have had it easy.


Having that phase out trick interrupt phase jump SUCKS -- but what was almost worse was the way it canceled the jump orders, forcing me to reset it!

dang love this replay

45-55min
annatar were able to kill almost 3 caps

1hour 12min
annatar were almost able to make an asteroid survive with 0 pop and just 2 in infrastructure haha

1hour 20min
i start to see the power of the phase gate... BIG

1hour 33min
there seem to be something wrong the shield restorer target priority of the Dunov, as it heals annatars ships it heals the ships thate already close to max. Would be smarter for it to heal those in 45 RED

2hours 34min
Annatars ships seems to be traveling from Calliope to Hamina at normal speed, where they actually should have gone into phase space

all in all this was a VERY learning experiance for me it helped me understand the Vasari much much more. Just the phasegate there ultimate weapon

It was also quite funny to see that 3 players who owned over half the map lost to 2 players hehe.

very GG all

Yeah, very amusing ha ha

It seems to me since we are destroying all life on a planet, it would pretty much destroy the culture once the population is gone.

FS_Coverfire, hehehe you confirmed my worse fear....a replacement fleet up and running.

I tend to agree with mike0012, how could culture possibly effect a planet with 0 population!?! That said, if broadcast centers are present in the planetary system or adjacent systems then I fully agree with a culture flip if the enemy colonises the destroyed planet.

Yeah Ron, but there should be a way to deal with it without having to do the exact same thing. Ultimately, no matter how you slice it, the random planets gave you a huge advantage. You had at least 2 terran and 2 asteroids able to feed culture to the volcanic within 2 jumps. I had 1 desert within 2 jumps, the other was a dead 'roid. Considering the culture fall-off per jump, I could not have pushed your culture away even if you had 3 centers feeding the volcanic directly from 1 jump away.

Culture becomes a huge huge issue for a longer-range attacker, especially in the positioning we were in. I had a thin strip of phase gates leading to your territories, and you had a mess of intertwined planets all supporting each other.

Every try to get a foothold in another star system that is covered with culture?
Talk about slowing down a game.

Also, if the new diplomacy options allow, sometimes i don't want to destroy an empire just take a planet or two, but with culture you almost have to.

You beat me to it, I just thought of this on the way to work

Having said that:




While this makes common sense, in terms of gameplay mechanics that would make culture a lot less useful and appealing than it is now. I don't think culture itself should be bonked with a nerf bat, but only some means be put in to allow you to deal with culture-stacking strategies

@Multi:



If I had zapped that Kol with another phase out hull, the 'roid would've rebuilt enough infrastructure to last. I miscalculated



Was this from Green's homeworld back to my space? Planet names escape me at the moment. If so, the Antorak's ultimate creates a temporary gate, and I'm pretty sure it's one way only - ships can jump in, but not jump out. I need to experiment more in single player!

it was from the volcano planet close to kilt to a planet of red's, which had a normal phase lane .




yeah thats what i think too

Just spent a bit of time watching the replay. I can't help but think that during the early game it may have been a mistake to set up the infrastructure for culture spam. Ron nearly took out light blue's (or white's) flag ship and we had enough forces to see of the mini assault on the volcanic planet.

Meanwhile, dark blue had to deal with the pirates and had we pushed on to light blue's (white's) homeworld and destroyed his flag ship, I think we could have taken out his ship yards quickly and even his planet.

On a larger map I definitely see the merit in going for culture, but on this particular map I think focusing on fleets should have been our priority. Anyway, it's all very well saying 'we should have done this' but it was definitely a learning experience.

Ohhh I know what you're talking about now. I think they started chasing some trade ships and did that. I didn't show them to go anywhere, when I noticed they were ways off already, I showed them to go back to the volcanic, then they did it again and I set them to hold position.

Oh! I wanted to add that I would love to have a rematch with the same teams. Despite my complaints I really did enjoy this game and felt that for the most part, players were pretty much balanced by way of ability.

Re: Antorak gate.

I did some testing on this in my game. The gate is two ways--that is, ships can jump to the Antorak, and ships can jump away from it. However, the Antorak itself can't use its own gate to jump away--if it moves, the ability turns off.

So in theory you can keep fleets bouncing between two Antoraks flying around if both open a gate.. interesting Thanks for testing it, appreciate it!

*grins evilly as he devises a new cunning strategy*

Yea,I would love a rematch with the same teams.The game was alot of fun.

Agreed!