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[PTTG??]

Don't you hate how hurrying happens before that turn's production,  not after?

At least you got some mindworms off that transport.

[baruk]

It would be handy if hurrying the unit made it instantly available.
I'd also prefer a system where it asked me how many minerals I want to buy, rather than forcing me to use arithmetic to figure out how many energy credits will buy the amount of minerals I want.

2116

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Two decisions this turn:
1. I dropped off the mind worm, and sent the isle of the deep to escort the gun foil towards the next unity pod. Not only do isles of the deep move through fungus without penalty, an empty transport picking up a unity pod at sea has a chance of finding an alien artifact. On the other hand, the gun foil gets the best chance at capturing native life, so the two make an effective pod-popping team.
2. I've decided on site B rather than A for my third colony, to make use of the new monolith.


 The forest is ready. A nice mineral boost for Gaia's Landing.


 New tech will be ready next turn. An unavoidable tech overspill will cost me one lab point, to my chagrin.

[baruk]

2117
The Worm Capture Zone is vindicated!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 Another tech:

 Green will be a huge boost for my native life strategy. I don't remember ever bothering to build roads across fungus, but I will try it out this game - it should give me more squares my scouts can patrol for mind worms.

A couple of new unit designs:

 Empath song adds 50% to PSI attack. This will be a great upgrade for my gun foil in particular.

My next research choice:

Ethical Calculus is both important to my strategy and obscure. What I mean is that other factions may not have researched it yet, which makes it relatively more valuable as a commodity. Before very long my navy should encounter the other factions, opening up all sorts of trading possibilities.

The fungus river patrol turns up its first critter..

but the capture attempt fails.

 I can't attack because I'm down to a third of a movement point giving me a -66% penalty. I just have to hold my position and hope for the best.

Note: I have the "check odds before attack" preference checked.

 My isle of the deep popped a unity pod:


The map:

New stuff:
- The Hive has built a third city on the edge of the jungle, with access to a monolith.
- My former's next project will be a road across the fungus to the new colony. It's on the same square as the colony pod.
- [off-map] The UN's scout found another monolith in the north-east.

[PTTG??]

Welp, you're going to have a lot of trouble with populations exploding in the jungle there.

[baruk]

 On the positive side it's more cities for me to conquer, right?

2117 continued
Going green

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 It's time for a change of government, but I'm shy of the 40 credits needed. So I have another short chat with Lal:


 The +3 Planet setting will improve my chances of capturing mind worms, as well as providing a bonus in PSI combat.


 Furthermore, at +4 efficiency the 100/0 lab setting incurs no penalty.

For comparison, frontier government with 70/30 labs would take 9 years to achieve the next breakthrough.

 The drawback is -2 Growth. As a result Nessus Shining will grow 2 turns later.

 However, two turns of worker output is fairly insignificant in comparison to the advantage gained.

[baruk]

2118
Hurt

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 I lost my first unit today: the fungus river patrol got killed by the mind worm they found. On a positive note, Nessus Shining is no longer losing a mineral in support, and will build the replacement worm hunters sooner.

 Another notable event:

 The forest replaced the fungus square my former and colony pod were standing on. I'll have to find a different fungus square to improve with a road.

The main map area:

- I could have built a city on the new forest spot, but decided an extra square's distance would be worthwhile.

 Also, the Gaian navy found another pod:

[baruk]

2118 addendum
Safety first

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 I decided to upgrade the scout patrol in Nessus Shining to Trance (+50% PSI defence) for 10 energy creds.

Perhaps I'm being over-cautious, but I was worried by the possibility of that rogue mind worm enhancing itself at the monolith, before launching an attack on the city the following turn. Upgrading a unit with crl+U requires a whole move, so getting that out of the way now gives my unit more flexibility next turn.

[baruk]

2119
That was a close one

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There were two significant moves during the AI turn:
1. The mind worm moved further into UN territory, reducing the threat posed to Nessus Shining.
2. The UN built a third city, UN Education Agency.

 As you can see, the border of my territory was pushed back. One more square and my colony pod would not be allowed to settle in its current position without breaking my pact with the UN.

So I went ahead and founded my third colony:

- I used the "support from here" option on the colony pod's scout patrol escort, changing its home base to Fallow Time. The upshot is that Gaia's Landing no longer loses a mineral every turn to support costs.
- The former started a road on the rocky fungus square, which will take 5 turns.

Meanwhile, at sea I popped another pod:


My two units separate to do some exploring:


I have a few constructions I want to hurry, so I decided to sell doctine:flexibility to Lal, bringing me up to 56 energy credits:

It may be prove to be a short-sighted decision if Lal builds his own navy and starts competing with me for unity pods.

[baruk]

2119 continued
Throwing money at the problem

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I have enough credits to hurry two constructions. I start with a partial payment of 24 for my first rover:


Next I pay 26 to finish a recycling tanks in my capital:

- Another possibility was to build a sea former in Gaia's Landing, but I decided that could wait.
- I'm one credit short of being able to hurry the formers in Fallow Time. It builds in two turns anyway, so it's not a huge deal.

[baruk]

2120
Prototypes and power graphs

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 The second recycling tanks finished:

The extra energy income from this and the new colony has been enough to bring the next tech breakthrough a turn closer.

We finished the rover, our first land-based prototype. But Yang has also been busy:

 He could have rovers, synthmetal or laser. Most likely synthmetal.

In 2120 the first power graph is published:

So Yang has the largest military, but hopefully it consists mainly of scout patrols. His low overall power rating confirms that he's struggling to obtain tech.

More sea exploration:

No sign of the inhabitants of that island, but someone must have discovered that monolith..

The main map:

- The new scout rover is promoted to disciplined at the monolith. It should hopefully manage to chase down some native life in a few turns.
- My freshly promoted mind worm has reached the main road, and will be able to defend Nessus Shining next turn if necessary.
- The Hive faction is up to 6 total population.

[baruk]

Summary 2111 to 2120

After 10 more turns I have 3 additional tech, another city and a handful of extra units, including my first ship, rover and native life units.

The Yang gamble:
 The vendetta with Yang has remained quiet for the last ten turns, so the decision to refuse his "truce for tech" offer seems vindicated.
 Who knows how long the phony war will continue, but I do feel that I'm in a somewhat better military position now that I have native life available. Actually defeating Yang still seems a long way off.

Exploring the sea:
 Obtaining Doctrine:Flexibility early has been a real coup, boosting my momentum significantly. I'm looking forward to discovering the other factions - even if they decide to declare vendetta, they will not pose any threat for a good while.
 
The tech chase:
 There is still some mileage left in the "Explore" part of the tech tree. After research into Ethical Calculus is finished, with some luck Gene Splicing will be available, which leads on to Ecological Engineering, the pre-requisite for several crucial mid-game techs. After that I will have to dabble in the other three areas.
 The approximate formula for research cost is as follows:

Research cost = [11+(DIFFx4)+((TECHSx6)/5)-(TURNS/8)-(MOSTTECHS/5)]xTECHSxWORLDSIZE

 The salient point here is the fact that the more tech you have, the greater the cost of your research. So trading for every available tech as soon as possible may not be the best strategy. This game mechanic would seem to favour a parsimonious approach to obtaining tech, so I'll only trade for what I need, when I need it.

A couple of mysteries:
 First of all, the tech overspill bug is not consistent. Check out turn 2117 - the additional lab point did not get wasted, and ended up being counted towards the next tech:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Secondly, I gained an unexplained 3 energy credits in 2120, despite having zero energy income. This is probably related to finishing a couple of constructions that turn, as additional industry may get converted into energy reserves (though it must be somewhat buggy considering that there shouldn't have been any industry overspill).

[baruk]

The Atlas of Chiron

 I decided to name the major land masses:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[IronyOwl]

Heh, neat.

[baruk]

2121
Tea with Santiago

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 My gun foil discovered the Spartans on Fugu:

 I noted that Bunker 118 has a scout patrol garrison and an alien artifact. Interesting.

 Santiago seemed friendly enough, and I decided to trade the Secrets tech for Nonlinear mathematics..


  Impact weaponry is a big enough deal to change my strategy somewhat. The native life approach has been a little slower than I'd hoped, so I'm going to turbo-charge my military with a few impact rovers. That should give Yang something to think about.

 She offered another deal:

 I decided to decline, so my tech cost isn't pushed up too high.

 She offered a treaty:

 Which I signed.

 And she mentioned that she has a navy:

 My worry is she'll find Yang and trade him impact weapons..

 Afterwards, I checked my tech progress with F2:

 Hopefully I'm still on course to finish next turn. I was concerned that gaining tech through trade would push my tech costs up immediately - but for some reason that only seems to happen to the AI factions.

 The map:

- My mind worm scooted along the road into Nessus Shining.
- The rover hunts its quarry in the shadow of Mount Planet.

 edit: A look at Fugu.

- The isle of the deep found the Spartan HQ (just a scout rover guarding it).
- A couple of new pods.

[baruk]

2122
What's up, Doc?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

An important explore tech:

Democracy and children's creches are two of the three ingredients needed for growth booming. The other is Planned government from planetary networks, which I can hopefully acquire when I run into the University. I long for the perfect booming game, where I have 5 cities all set up with children's creches by 2130 or before, along with sufficient food to maintain growth, and enough money to rush build all the rec commons and hologram theatres I'd need. That would be awesome.

Gene Splicing was available, so I took it:


Tech cost is up to 122 (from 77).

8 turns already feels like forever. In my mind I'm hovering closer to the strategy of trading for and then selling every tech available.

Moving adjacent to a UN scout resulted in a surprise, Lal suddenly popped up, sniffing around for free tech:

 I refused his demand, and luckily he didn't cancel the pact.

 Instead, I sold him the tech for the regular price:


The rover caught up with that rogue mind worm, but the capture attempt failed:


 I won the battle, claiming my first 10 credits worth of planet pearls. However, the rover took a beating, and was left limping on 30% health.

 At sea I had a better result, capturing the native life that sprang forth from a pod:

Bugwatch: Note that there are two mind worms on board the isle of the deep which, as a hatchling, only has space for one. I suspect one of them will have drowned by next turn.

The original isle of the deep continues its southern voyage, in search of the three missing factions:


Finally, the main map area:


- Nessus Shining is now building the impact rover prototype, which I decided should give a better return than another colony pod, since the Hive is ultimately a giant cash pinata waiting to be bust open. Now that it has reached 10 minerals, the cost of hurrying it is 105. I only have 44, so I'll need to sell some more tech in the near future.
- The capital and the new city are going for the more peaceful options of sea formers and recycling tanks. The sea formers can be hurried for 68 credits, but the question is should it take priority over the impact rover?
- Check out my beaten up scout rover, on 70% damage. Hopefully it can limp back to heal at the monolith without getting jumped.
- On the power graph, Morgan just overtook the Hive as military leader.
- The fungus road is finished.