STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP (THE SEDG) (Sponsored by Flying Moose Technologies' Starweb Analyzer - http://www.flyingmoose.ca) VOLUME 70 March 3, 2002 CONTENTS Feature Article – SW-1316: A tale of Two Alliances Questions – Plundering PBBed worlds SEDG Web Page URL The Swap Corner Correspondence FEATURE ARTICLE Editor's note: This feature article is accompanied by the map for the particular Starweb game. If you're a subscription member it should be attached and if you are a web based visitor check out the Mapper's section of the SEDG web page for the SW-1316 map. SW-1316: A tale of Two Alliances By Scott Davis and Craig Steel INTRODUCTION The following is the tale of SW-1316 from my position. I am RUNNER (Scott Davis) and I chose to be an Artifact Collector for this game. I have also included the perspective of a member of the opposing alliance, ISHTAR (Craig Steel), at the end of my narration. It was apparent early on that the map was a standard grid. The map eventually turned out to be a double wrap-around "sphere" with two blank squares. I focused on maximum expansion in an attempt to grab as much art early on as possible. As it turns out, there were at least 5 drops early in this game. One was picked up on Turn 1 and another on Turn 4. The other three opened for a few turns, but then dropped and became fodder for easy conquest. The game lasted a total of 16 turns. INITIAL MOVES AND NEGOTIATIONS The first three turns went as usual. By Turn 3, I either owned or had probed all my Ring-2 worlds. I had even managed to bring 6 metals back to my homeworld. Quite a haul, I think. On Turn 4, things became very interesting when I met 5 other players. They are VULCAN (Doug Clark) the merchant, PYREBANE (Wayne Bailey) and SAINTOGEL (Norm Hecht) the apostles, CAESAR (Cameron Bowman) the builder, and XANTH the pirate. VULCAN even showed up at my Ring-2 world carrying the Plastic Pyramid and the Lesser of Two Evils. I should have known then that it was the start of a great alliance. *GRIN* Anyway, I quickly sent out requests for alliances to all five players. My definition of an alliance is that all allies work together for the common good, scoring, and defense. The ultimate goal is to take the top spots with the exact same score. Anyway, I received some interest from VULCAN and PYREBANE. VULCAN was somewhat standoffish at first because of previously being burned by such an alliance. CAESAR was amiable and willing to talk about an alliance; however, he dropped the game by Turn 5 (and was polite enough to let me know he was doing so). For reference, Turn 5 was the first turn received after September 11, 2001. On Turn 5, I met another pirate named FREPP. He did not have a sign and never responded to messages. Thus he, along with CAESAR his neighbor, became immediate targets. By then, I was closely allied with PYREBANE and his ally, QUINAX (Frank Hamilton), the berzerker. All three of us, as it turns out, were back to back on the corner of one of the "blank squares". Two Black Holes (which PYREBANE discovered on Turn 4 and Turn 5) were at our nexus. QUINAX was the Turn 4 late- starter. He met our future nemesis ISHTAR the pirate (Craig Steel) at two of his Ring-1 worlds. By Turn 6, VULCAN had agreed to join our merry little band to bring our alliance to a total of 4. PYREBANE made my day with a gift of the Ancient Pyramid. We proceeded to gift and turn over as many worlds as possible to PYREBANE. We also ensured that QUINAX met VULCAN and started ramping up the merchant-controlled shipping at every homeworld. I continued exploring into untended CAESAR and FREPP territory and found FREPP's homeworld. I would have lost my key if I had one ship less. I was lucky that FREPP abandoned the game with most of his fleets away from home. As it turns out, VULCAN and PYREBANE bounded FREPP and we proceeded to take his holdings. I gifted a key over the FREPP homeworld to QUINAX on Turn 8 and the world was robotized intact on Turn 9 and at full production by Turn 10. By Turn 8, I had all of VULCAN's, PYREBANE's, and QUINAX's artifacts and was sailing along at around 32 artifacts for 650+ points per turn. On Turn 9, I discovered CAESAR's homeworld about one step ahead of SAINTOGEL. I gifted my key to QUINAX and brought up ships to assist in robotizing. This would take a couple of turns; however, we let SAINTOGEL think we had more in the area than we really did. It would be Turn 11 before we robotized the homeworld. We agreed to let SAINTOGEL, who was working alone, to have the rest of CAESAR on the other side of his homeworld. Our relationship at this time was an unspoken non-aggression pact. We would shortly go on to work as allies, though, when the time came to invade XANTH. From here, the conflict splinters into the different theatres of war and movement. DECLARATION OF WAR By Turn 8, we had decided to target two people. The first was XANTH, who shared a border with PYREBANE and I. He was a mostly non- communicative pirate and thus an easy target. By the time we got around to invading him, though, we discovered that an over-zealous builder named DRACO was well along into invading him from the other side. This turn of events was to become the most interesting part of the game. The other target we decided to take on was the point leader and fairly strong pirate, ISHTAR. We knew he was allied with a builder name RAND. His other suspected allies or associates included TAPPZ (Bruce Loving) the merchant and BRAMMER (Jim Brammer) – the other art collector in the game. The main reason we targeted ISHTAR was to thwart TAPPZ. He was a merchant who was in position to run away with the game. We were seeing high point gains that out-stripped those of our merchant. The ill- fated purpose of our invasion was to bomb ISHTAR's homeworld to oblivion and deny those points to TAPPZ. Invading XANTH was done just because it was easy to do so. XANTH (DRACO) THEATRE OF THE WAR On Turn 10, the grand invasion of XANTH was commenced when I moved in with 65 ships, 3 keys, and an unpredictable BLACK BOX (which would sometime double the ships on my key and sometimes half them) within one move of the XANTH homeworld. On Turn 11, I moved in to discover DRACO blowing away most of XANTH's fleets. XANTH had 10 ships on 5 keys left. DRACO had a force of 96 ships on 7 keys. I had a meager force (now short 19 ships due to a BLACK BOX deletion phase). I contacted XANTH via telephone and asked that he transfer up all his I-ships and I would fire AI to kill the industry. I will never know to this day if he did so, though. On Turn 12, I fired AI with 48 ships (the plan was to have more) and left 6 industry standing. Either he gave me ships and the BLACK BOX halved them, or he didn't give me his ships and the BLACK BOX doubled them. Either way, the deed was done (and I dumped the treacherous BLACK BOX on one of my worlds the next turn). I had also brought up a key with 30 more reinforcements. Needless to say, DRACO was pissed off. I knew I could not win a war with him at that time, but my main objective was accomplished: No homeworld for TAPPZ to ship to. Heh. Ever read "The Man Who Used the Universe" by Alan Dean Foster? My paranoia of TAPPZ reminds me of the main character. On Turn 13, I placed 2 ships on every unoccupied key (all 18 of them) at the former XANTH homeworld. I then moved out to set traps against invasion from DRACO. DRACO moved out like a mad hornet and invaded my territory in force. On Turn 14, my 8-ship probe had moved to DRACO's Ring-1 world and captured it. It seems DRACO was not putting down homefleets in many locations. On the opposite side of DRACO (In the ISHTAR theatre), I had already taken a world or two from him with a one-ship key. DRACO continued to move in to my home areas and even forced one of my worlds neutral – an unfortunate incident that prevented PYREBANE and QUINAX from bombing it that turn. He also showed up at another PBB target world with 98 ships on a single key and interrupted the PBB drop there. Still, his probes and movements showed that he did not have a clue where my homeworld was located. He kept moving past my area in the direction of the black holes. On Turn 15, DRACO was still no closer than my Ring-2 worlds. I moved a 1-ship key through a world he could see and sent it straight into a black hole. The trick did not work, though, as he moved the other direction on Turn 16. DRACO's large, 98-ship key took the world where I had dumped the BLACK BOX. I never did see what became of the BLACK BOX as DRACO did not share his turn sheet (or I lost it) at the end of the game. On Turn 16, the final turn, DRACO explored a little more in my area and even made it to two of my Ring-1 worlds. My ships were all out being turned into points by the berzerker and apostles and could not defend against the invasion. But, alas, the game ended too soon for him to get ultimate vengeance. ISHTAR THEATRE OF THE WAR On Turn 10, the grand invasion of ISHTAR commenced with the few smallish fleets that we had massed. We were seeking his homeworld which we hoped to destroy and eliminate scoring for TAPPZ. We probed heavily into ISHTAR territory and managed to reach one Ring-2 world and two Ring-3 worlds. A weak initial invasion; however, these fleets set the stage for what was to come. On Turn 11, some of these fleets moved down to another Ring-2 world while other fleets probed two Ring-1 worlds. We had the homeworld located. Still, though, our fleets were massing and we had no serious incursions into ISHTAR space. Also, it seems that ISHTAR had a habit of leaving some worlds without homefleets, too. My 4-ship fleet started his rampage starting this turn. He captured and held (for at least a few turn) 6 worlds along the ISHTAR/DRACO front before the end of the game – and finished the game unscathed and in my possession. The captain of that crew wins the Medal of Honor. Of note is that here is where the tides of the scoring turned. TAPPZ apparently, from looking at his score, missed turning in his Turn 11. He made no points. That one turn allowed us to be assured that our merchant could surpass him and stay in front of him. On Turn 12, though, the invasion floodgates (such as they were) opened. We had about 115 ships on 12 keys. We could only see about 60 opposing ISHTAR/BRAMMER/RAND/TAPPZ ships, though. We got a good probe of the homeworld and were sitting at two Ring-1 worlds. The bulk of our forces were at a Ring-2 world, though, and would have to jump through ambushes. We decided not to risk it and took the wimpy way out. The main reason to go forward at this point was because, even though our objective of surpassing TAPPZ in score was attained (due to his missed turn), we had stirred up ISHTAR and needed to delay his counter-attack into QUINAX space. On Turn 13, we moved in force to two Ring-1 worlds, captured a couple of more worlds, and brought up about 40 reinforcements. With what we could see, though, ISHTAR was bringing up at least 100 ships. Our invasion was not going so well on the conquest side; however, we were slowing down ISHTAR's scoring rate – which was alarmingly high for a pirate. On Turn 14, we decided it was too much risk to go into the ISHTAR homeworld. Good thing, too, because ISHTAR, RAND, and TAPPZ brought about 300 ships and 20 keys to defend against a force half that size. For the most part, we did not even move in. We had set our score projections and saw that it was time for points. QUINAX robotized a few worlds and moved other keys into place for further robot drops and PBBs. Also, my rogue key was now down to one ship and on it's fourth world capture from ISHTAR/DRACO. He was plundering as he went, too, to keep the worlds from being useful to a pirate. Also about this time, VULCAN finished absorbing a good bit of a dropped position and starting pushing into the space that ISHTAR was working in. The purpose of this push was to be a minor, back-door annoyance as well as to slow down the ISHTAR and TAPPZ scoring efforts. He also was trying to expand the areas that could be bombed and robotized by his allies. SAINTOGEL, who had thrown in with us by now, started pushing up from the other side of the homeworld with a few forces. On Turn 15, ISHTAR realized the feint for what it was and moved out in force to capture us. He only managed to catch a single 1-ship QUINAX key – right after it totally robotized an ISHTAR world. In addition, VULCAN moved in with some force to the dropped position homeworld that ISHTAR had just managed to take the turn before. Although VULCAN was overmatched, he was more interested in another feint on the ISHTAR backside to keep him guessing and to keep ISHTAR's troops from swinging fully from one flank to the other. On Turn 16, we made our final moves. ISHTAR captured a few more fleets and we bombed a few more worlds. ISHTAR/RAND/TAPPZ started to counter- invade QUINAX, but it was too late to do any good at that point. VULCAN stayed and fired at the dropped homeworld and at a fleet. It would have been a rough battle to have to continue another turn; however, he kept most of ISHTAR's fleets in place. ISHTAR PERSPECTIVE After the game, Craig (ISHTAR) and I exchanged messages. It seems that ISHTAR was never working with DRACO. He was already allied with RAND the empire builder and was having enough problems sorting out the world sharing. ISHTAR probably could have done better without RAND (who was a new player) in the alliance. In his way of thinking, BRAMMER the art collector and he could have done just as well on their own. ISHTAR said that, in retrospect, he suspects that he would not have been racing in front in scoring; therefore, he might not have turned into the obvious target of my alliance in the mid-game. Without our attack, he thinks he would have probably had about the same plunder possibilities. Little did he know that we attacked him mostly to stop his merchant. "Ah well. It's different every time, and that's what makes it great." -- Craig aka ISHTAR The following text is a game summary from Craig in his own words (edited slightly for format and typos): "We were only ever allied with DRACO through TAPPZ the merchant who was hauling for both of us. It became a mutual non-aggression pact - sort of - we nibbled at each others corners a couple of times, but were both distracted by bigger fish to fry. Several turning points in the game led to it slipping away:" "The drop that was next to me was an apostle. And he was a total pain at the start of the game - completely uncommunicative (mutual hatred of him was what put RAND and I together in the first place). But, in the mid-game when we went after him after he dropped, we wasted a fair amount of resources trying to unconvert his homeworld. Had it been a more easily convertable homeworld it would have made a huge difference to the number of ships we had in position at our disposal. At the end of the game, the dead apostle position started reclaiming some of the worlds, and one's that weren't being reclaimed were using up ships keeping the converts down." "I made some in-roads into the QUINAX area during his dropped phase, and knew that we had pinpointed his homeworld on the turn Frank came active. Knowing I already had an apostle homeworld in my sights, I made the decision to keep the game interesting for Frank by not taking out his homeworld. Turns out that was a mistake and I should have invested the ships into crippling his position. However, given the atmosphere in the world at the time both in real life (immediately post September 11th) and inside the game (a fair cry going on in SEDG about the lack of new players and what could be done to build up the player base) I knew that was the only way I could play it at the time." "Both RAND and BRAMMER were inexperienced players. The burden of being the idea guy of the alliance was too much for me personally at the time (just other life issues getting in the way of a good war game). It was difficult to convince them both of some of the fairly standard things that more experienced players take for granted - don't leave home fleets on your home world in the early turns, if you're fighting, it's better to be aggressive than defensive, that sort of "givens". They made mistakes in failing to move hauling fleets early on before TAPPZ was fully integrated. They'd take in all the emails, and then not follow through with everything without warning. In all, fairly typical inexperienced players. I actually argued against expanding our alliance to 4 at the time - it was also the days of railing against the mega-alliance in the SEDG issues of the day - knowing it would make it harder for us to work together, but the EB wanted access to the art collector's worlds." "Missed turns killed us. I don't have a count, but I'd be willing to bet between the four of us, we missed 7 or 8 out of 60 of the first turns (4 players * 15 turns). That continually set us behind the eight ball in terms of moving around, scoring, defending, claiming a 6th homeworld (another drop turned up between TAPPZ & myself - I think Vulcan eventually ended up scrapping over that on as well)." Another key point that I had forgotten until reading the composite summary. Tappz was never hauling for Brammer. We were doing our own work of controlling "our" merchants score, and knew that he was hauling for Draco on the side (he had met Draco first, and Draco was the owner of the merchant's homeworld). So, we only ever gave him access to 2 of our homeworlds. Yet another war launched based on unneccesary pretenses. ;-) Also, I hadn't been aware before now, but SAINTOGEL was playing both sides at the end. We were allowing him in to summon up converts at a few of our worlds with mid-sized fleets (mostly in the GEMMAX area which was the last homeworld which Vulcan and I were scrapping over) in return for some gifts of worlds for plundering. Heh. Just goes to show that it's pretty rare for any one person or alliance to understand everything that's going on about the game, even at the very end. SCORING Our initial three-way alliance decided that our target score was to be a three-way tie. When we added VULCAN, this target became a four-way tie. Around the middle turns, though, PYREBANE messed up his Jihad declaration for a 1000-point mistake. We ended up having to readjust for a three-way tie target because of pressure from ISHTAR and TAPPZ. When SAINTOGEL joined our ranks for the attack on XANTH, we tried to help his score along as best we could, but we all knew that it was not realistic for him to be able to keep up at that point. From Turn 8 on, I (RUNNER) was setting the scoring pace to keep. By the end of the game, I had 36 artifacts and three museums; however, none of the museums were needed for the final score. We calculated out the final score and adjusted robot and metal drops in an attempt to hit it. At the end, I debated dropping a single museum just in case ISHTAR was working with DRACO and could assemble all of the V1 through V5 artifacts. Although QUINAX and VULCAN could have matched the extra 500 points, they instead calmed my paranoia. We did not want to run up the score on PYREBANE and SAINTOGEL. And things turned out for the best, anyway. VULCAN and I scored 7718 and 7719, respectively. QUINAX mixed up an order and went on to score 7758 for the final winning score. Even so, a 40-point spread isn't all that bad. PYREBANE took fourth place with 6435. ISHTAR took fifth with 6317 (that's a 814 rating for a pirate – not bad!). TAPPZ placed eighth with 5222 and SAINTOGEL took ninth with 4914. ISHTAR'S CONCLUSIONS After it was over, I felt bad that I'd come that close as a pirate and let the win get away... but I felt I'd done good community service in carry two or three "younger" players through an early game in their StarWeb careers. Abandoned positions were huge. The layout and composition of them and which ones were taken over and which ones weren't really turned the tide in the game. It was well played though. I remember playing cat & mouse near the end with QUINAX as he chased down one small fleet of mine - which just tried showing up at worlds to steal them as they came ready for another plunder. I agonized over that fleet's movements more than I ever have over 90 ship juggernaut fleets. RUNNER'S CONCLUSIONS All in all, this was an enjoyable game. I enjoyed working with my allies to plan some risky, but ultimately fruitful maneuvers. The game had just enough combat to be fun, but not so much that our alliance lost the scoring battle. Abandoned positions played a big part in the scoring, but they were fortunately divided evenly amongst those in my alliance and those in the ISHTAR/RAND alliance. The biggest difference was that we could robotize those homeworlds and service them with a merchant. And like ISHTAR, I derived great pleasure from the movements of the smaller fleet I mentioned under "ISHTAR THEATRE", above. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTIONS - Can anyone answer these? A question by Jeff Calkins posed last issue: >> Elliot, I'm playing a PBM in the final stages. I want to have my pirate capture and then plunder a world that has previously been PBBed. I successfully transferred a population to the bombed world and my pirate now owns it so I will plunder it this turn. Will my plunder be successful if the population dies (population capacity is 0 on bombed out worlds? Would it be successful if I transferred over another population this turn? Thanks for the help, Jeff Calkins << Paul Balsamo replies: El, In response to Jeff Calkins question: He needs to migrate another normal pop to the world and he will retain ownship (and the plunder goes through). If he doesn't migrate, he loses the world and the plunder. Paul New Question: You can't find the answer in the rulebook and I certainly have a strong opinion about this strategy. So I'm hoping to generate some discussion about this idea I've heard thrown about. It has been opined by some that to augment a pirate's score it is a good idea to plunder it on turn 1. Your thoughts? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP - is now available on the web. Look for our new MAPPER'S SECTION on the SEDG Web Page. http://www.accessv.com/~somnos/sedg.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FEATURE - THE SWAP CORNER STARWEB ANALYZER V1.5 - It's on the web site and it's no longer a Beta! Go get it! As before - registered clients of any previous V1.x version can upgrade for free. www.flyingmoose.ca Tidbits regarding the Starweb Analyzer V2.0 (written under the .net framework). Mike has been busy recreating the analyzer and upgrading it. It's not ready yet to call a beta (heck, I would hesitate to call it an alpha :-). One feature I would like to tease you with – the fleet icons that you see at the bottom of the worlds (allied and opponent) are way cooler in V2.0 and you can see them charge their weapons and fire on each other or the world if a homefleet attack occurs. PBBed worlds go up in a mushroom cloud regularly while you view your turn too. As soon as it progresses a little further we shall invite some of you to beta test it. El ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CORRESPONDENCE Jeff Smurthwaite writes: Very interesting observations on Starweb. I started playing, I think, in about 1981/2 when I got my first Compuserve account and have only played via email. I have come back to Starweb after a not insignificant hiatus, maybe 5 years, and have found the same people playing. I, too, tried different personalities. I am not the "play to win or rank" type, I have played for fun and interest, so I tried some characters that I originally wanted to be backstabbers since that is NEVER done. But I could never do it. One of the reasons I quit playing was that it became too predictable. Now the computer-based games I used to love are all too predictable. I don't think there has been more than 3 to 5 original ideas in gaming in YEARS. RPGs all follow the same formula, strategy games all follow the same formula, single-person shooters .. all the same. Personally, I am looking forward to Star Wars Galaxies as it is supposed to break a mold. But, as an early addict to Evercrack, I found that the subsequent variants are much the same formula ... fight MOBs, get money, advance, buy cool clothes, repeat. It quickly loses fascination. So what is the answer? I have always found myself to have opinions that lead the overall cultural milieu (sp). I became a Sopranos fanatic before anyone heard of it. I watched Seinfeld from episode one. I was one of the first people on Everquest, etc. So I am hoping that my feelings around the sad state of affairs of computer gaming will sweep the nation and we will see something new to enrapture us and tie us hopelessly to our keyboards again. However, there has not been a major change in Starweb since I started playing. I stopped my subscriptions to all of the "magazines" Rick sends out, so I have no idea how many people are still playing. But I played with Larry Roche in 1982 :-) So .. anyway .. enjoyed your thoughts, as usual. Well, that's it for Volume 70. Don't be afraid to submit articles or suggestions. They don't have to be long. Address your correspondence to Elliot Hudes at somnos@compuserve.com