Star Empires Game 7 Results From: rhl@telesto.mitre.org (Roger Lincoln) Date: Fri, 14 Apr 1995 00:00:00 +0000 [ Star Empires press release. Cleared by U.S. Military. ] Star Empires Game 7 has ended! After 50 turns, once per week, the two-player alliance of Argosy and Fugacious has emerged victorious. Two other players, NIN and Tradjen, are still fighting to NOT be included in the winning alliance and to give the other due credit. In this case, modesty is not a virtue, it's an embarrassment. The last surviving aggressor, Gravitons, is just plain pissed. Tradjen, the lead player and last real threat to the alliance, graciously surrenderred to her friend NIN, part of the winning alliance. NIN, with the resolve and ambition of a soggy cornflake, immediately pulled out of the winners circle spouting obscenities like "honor" and "self-respect" and demanded that Tradjen take his place. Not wanting to start a riot of self-abasing humilty, I've declared both of them too civilized to properly rule the galaxy; therefore Argosy and Fugacious are the official winners and are given the responsibility of abusing and enslaving the conquered races of the galaxy until all thoughts of humble modesty are replaced by a proper hatred of all that is good. The ranking of the final 5 players, based on the percentage of the galaxy's total Resources they conquered... Name Status Pct Planets Ships Tradjen *loser* 30% 75 576 [Candyce@baka.ithaca.ny.us] Fugacious Winner 27% 73 561 [sjelliott@mmm.com] Argosy Winner 24% 64 732 [dave@tso4a.can.cdc.com] NIN *loser* 4% 11 151 [GANSKA@delphi.com] Gravitons surrendered 1% 3 61 [valiviit@cc.helsinki.fi] There were 38 original races scattered among a galaxy of 250 habitable planets. Over the course of the campaign 12,111 different ships were built, of which 9719 were destroyed and many more left damaged, disabled, or abandoned. The final build tally... Ship Type # Built 1. Dreadnaught 22 2. Battleship 84 3. Battlecruiser 12 4. Attack Cruiser 25 5. Heavy Cruiser 1 (only 1?!) 6. Light Cruiser 191 7. Destroyer 8 8. Corvette 4 9. Raider 16 10. Frigate 120 11. Corsair 14 12. Escort 55 13. Fleet Carrier 112 14. Light Carrier 383 15. Transport 2220 16. Strike Wing 2900 17. Fighter Wing 2444 18. Patrol Wing 642 19. Scout 871 20. Orbital Fortress 5 21. Orbital MkII 2 22. PDC 38 23. Missile 1916 24. Probe 51 25. Fleet Base 13 Due to a heavy workload I was not able to follow this game too closely, so I offered to let each of the participants record history from their perspective, three have recorded events for posterity, their narration follows (my comments enclosed in [] ). I'd like to thank all the players who participated, it was a hard fought battle and you all played admirably. Over the past 8 games I've become friends with many repeat players and even received some cookies through the mail from some. (As soon as I get the lab results back I'll finally sample them :-) Circumstances won't permit me to start anymore games. Maybe someday. Until then, keep your spaceways clear! =============== From the Chronicles of Fugacious =============== Fugacious - Lasting a short time. Evanescent. Disappearing before the usual time. Well, after tasting victory in several games prior, I chose a name in an attempt to play a different strategy. Hit em hard and often, exiting early, but enjoying the blood bath. Needless to say, the competitive diplomat in me took over and in no time I was forming alliances with Gravitons and Argosy. I attempted to keep my anonymity this game, (as I've tried every game). The only player I knew in this game was Wrathe [Tradjen in this game] of old (A friend of a friend). When it came time to take out Megawombat [D.J.Nash@exeter.ac.uk], the killing came easily. Then the opportunity to work with Apostasia [eisen@eridani.edc.org] and attack Shleprock [darin@chem.UCSD.EDU] availed itself. It was a very ugly, and sometimes ear burning, information system at this point. Shleprock had threatened to send back 1000 messages for each one I sent him. :-) Limericar [robert@chem.UCSD.EDU] was eliminating Tradjen, when Argosy, NIN, and Fugacious donated resources and attacked all those who would aid Limericar. Needless to say it was also bloody. Luckily, my Southern and Western borders were quite spare and I have no neighbors to worry about. With Gravitons and Argosy to my East and West, it meant further expansion to the North. Fugacious noticed Apostasia protected his worlds with a large number of Wings [squadrons of small offensive or defensive craft]. The temptation was too great, and a temporary alliance was broken and a costly but profitable attack was launched on Apostasia. At this point, Empire [hposo@pcu.helsinki.fi] had risen to #1, with H.O.T. [House of Tarot, smellack@crash.cts.com] #2, and Fugacious somewhere up there as well. How could I throw it all away now? I then decided to go after the #1, so launched my next attacks against Empire and HOT, with help from Gravitons and Argosy, while Tradjen and Midol [dagibbs@qnx.com] attacked Jerry [billc@oracles.ucsd.edu]. The battle raged for some time, but in the end, Tradjen and Midol had an easy time of it and needed new targets. Rather than be a target, Fugacious expanded further, attacking Midol, who then proceeded to build a fleet of wings on each 4/12 [rich homeplanets] making the result inevitable, but making it last too long and making it costly. By this time, Tradjen and I had agreed to the win and were trying to decide on who, if anyone, to include [no more than 3 players allowed in the winning alliance]. Tradjen favored Argosy, while I wanted Gravitons. After my attacking Midol, Tradjen struck a blow to Gravitons, and it was decided, Argosy would be the third wheel. However, Tradjen had a soft spot for NIN. As the battles raged, Tradjen was always one world away from victory alone [ranked at least 5% above all other players] I even moved a fleet to several Argosy worlds to take them in case it was necessary to keep me close in second place. After some dealing, I finally cut Gravitons loose and finally took some Midol worlds to pull back even with Tradjen. Tradjen then suggested surrendering to the winners to end the game. As my orders are quite extensive now, I did not mind (although I did want to shoot for the one year mark.) [the game lasted 51 weeks] I'm sure I've left out McDonalds [damian@cthulu.med.jhu.edu] and others in my story, the attempts to identify players as to whether they came from SE5 or 6, :-) [previous games], and other actions. Scott Elliott sjelliott@mmm.com ================= From the Chronicles of Gravitons =============== This is the story as viewed from the singularity by Gravitons. On turn 1: I get two worlds, although only one was seen on turn 0. Rank 20. On turn 2: Rank 13. First contact is made with Fugacious, who later pledges to stay with me till the end. [a bit peeved are we?] On turn 3: Argosy is contacted and worlds are peacefully shared. Rank 10. On turn 4: Rank 6. On turn 9: First blood, as I assist in the destruction of Megawombat. I also take an unguarded world from Nanites. [rgh1837@summa.tamu.edu] On turn 10: Operation against Vorlons [aray@triton.unm.edu] is fumbled as both me and Argosy land at same unguarded worlds. Resolved nicely next turn. On turn 11: Nanites operation escalates as an escort [light warship] is blown away. Rank again at 6. On turn 13: Nanites homeworld is attacked by me. On turn 16: Nanites homeworld is conquered and capital changed there in preparation for extended operations in the area. On turn 20: I attack Unknown [falcon@binkley.cs.mcgill.ca] and cause a diplomatic incident as others are already attacking. On turn 22: Unknown homeworld is conquered, preparations to attack Empire are underway. On turn 23: Empire is attacked by me and others, on a wide front. On turn 24: H.O.T. counterattacks. On turn 25: First gains from Empire are made. On turn 31: Empire campaign nears it's end. Preparations to attack Midol are started. Rank 4. On turn 35: Midol's pre-emptive strike arrives. On turn 36: Attack on Midol begins. On turn 38: Tradjen joins Midol and attacks me. Turns 40+: While Midol is reduced to building wings [last ditch defensive effort] by my allies, Tradjen's superior production gradually overwhelms me, despite largish resource shipments from Fugacious. Turn last: Tradjen gives away her victory to my allies and NIN, none of whom I ever fought. [that'll learn ya'] Gravitons. =============== From the Chronicles of Tradjen ================ Brief History (yeah, right!): First a caveat...the exact time line might not be correct here. I've since dumped most of my historical records. In the begining, there was only Tradjen. We explored and quickly found some decent worlds. Unlike our previous turn at the Galactic Wheel, we were catapulted immediately into second place by turn 4 or so. We struck up non-aggression policies with our neighbors. The universe would be a peaceful place it seemed. Then we got a message from Suntzu [KREMPEL@stpc.wi.leidenuniv.nl], a warlike race to the west of NIN, who was to my west himself. It was evident to Suntzu that the NIN had never studied elementary ship building and defenses. An honest and trustworthy race, the NIN were under attack and were about to fall. After extensive communications with the Suntzu, Lord Tradjen realized the huge danger a successful Suntzu Empire would one day become...so Tradjen did what he did best...he arranged to educate NIN on the economics of War. In the ensuing encounters, NIN pulled a dramatic upset upon Suntzu. This was primarily because the NIN employed new operational theories the Suntzu did not expect. In fact, NIN was able to pull off a dramatic backstab of the aggressor Suntzu, destroying much of Suntzu's forces. Lord Tradjen mourned Suntzu's loss in earnest. Though he had no choice but to protect his frontier, he genuinely liked Suntzu once further acquaintences and visits occurred. But, Suntzu made a major error...he underestimated the capabilities of his enemy to learn and adapt to the situation, and NIN did very well with his new perspective. And, in truth, Suntzu probably would not have stood by the Tradjen Empire in the coming travails. Meanwhile, Tradjen began to look north towards the rich territory of Jerry for further resources. Jerry had not lived up to a minor agreement on a NASA [s911325@minyos.xx.rmit.EDU.AU] world (Jerry's reasoning was, he felt forced into the agreement), and Jerry had backstabbed Tradjen in a minor way. Tradjen was on friendly terms with all his other neighbors, including Shleprocks (the best name in the game ;-), who had earlier proposed a peace treaty (which was accepted by the Tradjen). Around turn 4 Tradjen was attacked in the west by a now-lost empire. This interdicted a major amount of resources. Tradjen had also loaned NIN some resources temporarily about this time. Tradjen used his skills to convince the aggressor to back off. Not a shot was fired. Lord Tradjen was beligerent in tone at times, but he scrupulously lived up to all agreements. At this time, Tradjen's orders to his defensive forces were corrupted, (no doubt by the Dark Alliance ;-) [an early alliance that threatened the galaxy] and a couple of key worlds were left undefended with wings. Simultaneously, Shleprocks launched a surprise attack, breaking his own agreement of peace. This surprised Lord Tradjen since the move made almost no sense on a number of fronts. Though Shleprock's timing was great...Tradjen had interdicted resources and resources he'd already loaned out to others, the empire was compact, easily defended, had lots of amicable relations, and it was well known by our foes that Tradjen knew how to command battle forces. It turns out that the Tradjen Race sprang from an earlier race known as the Wrathe...and the Dark Alliance already knew this information from a communications artifact. At the time of the Shleprock foray, Limericar had proposed an alliance with the Tradjen. Lord Tradjen deferred acceptance until the following turn. Limericar asked for turnsheet information as a mark of trust. Tradjen gave it, but carefully edited out key information (that could not be easily verified by our foes), such as reserve forces. Tradjen did his utmost to deter Shleprocks and convice him to back off. We all make mistakes, and the Tradjen had no particular quarrel with Shleprocks. The Shleps hinted, however, that the Tradjen were being gunned for by an alliance of 5 parties, an alliance formed long ago. This was bad news indeed. If a significant alliance had formed at such an early stage in the universe, it MUST be stopped before it overran the galaxy! A distress call went out to many empires, and much concern was evoked. Then, in a truly dramatic development, Tradjen was assasinated, and Limericar attacked! [ this is where it really gets strange. This is a textbook example of role-playing taken to the point of Multiple Personality Syndrome :-] The woman behind the throne stepped into the breach. She'd been a long time advisor to Tradjen, and understood his ways. It chilled her heart to have her leige murdered in cold blood...but an anger hot and furious rose up in it's place. As she took the throne, she declared in a spontaneous speech to her people: "I will henceforth be known as THE WRATHE OF TRADJEN". She would honor, and avenge, her slain leader. She quickly went to work. The interdicted resources were released, and soon after her loan to NIN was returned. She made the most of those resources to demoralize her enemies, declaring that others were supporting her efforts. At the time, none were, directly, though they were accused of doing so. This was okay for the Wrathe of Tradjen...it had the result of making her foes frantic...and in being frantic, they made mistakes. She did, in the end, receive resources from 5 or so empires. Mostly this was a token number, and all told, over 5 turns the Tradjen received maybe 130 RUs [resource units] or so. Not a lot when you're supposedly facing 5 opponents. But, it was enough. In terms of later hyperbola, nothing was ever promised to any of the donors, other than that the Wrathe of Tradjen would look kindly upon her benefactors... but it was in their interests as well as ours to stop this nefarious alliance born in infamy! Many races started sending me intelligence reports, including one race that was ostensibly on the side of the dark alliance! Tradjen then went to work at destroying the integrity of the Dark Alliance. The easiest to split off was actually the leader, Limericar. The ego of the foe is often immence, and this case was typical. She spoke to him of galactic domination, and with her forces he could become sole ruler of the galaxy! He fell for it. There was just one catch. She required the unaltered turnsheet of the initial aggressor, Shleprocks, so he could more easily be fended off. This condition was accepted. In a rare trace of remourse, the Wrathe of Tradjen felt guilty of her plan and offered to NOT attack Shleprocks. Alas, Limericar was not interested in that outcome, and encouraged her to bring the attack to Shleprock. For her this was the final straw. Races that are willing to backstab friends as well as enemies deserve to die the final death! [ there goes 80% of the players ] One of the premier backstabs was then engineered and pulled off, and major parts of the Limericar forces were destroyed. If Limericar hadn't been convinced he could pull off a single person victory, I doubt it could have happened...but it DID work, as history shows us ;-). [ History written by the victors ] Fugacious, smelling opportunity [what he's best at] had moved major forces up Shleprock's way. Fuggy funded Tradjen with about 90 of those 130 RUs, with which I built a PDC killer [a task force composed of ships good at attacking Planetary Defense Centers, guarding the 38 original homeworlds]. With the aid of the turnsheet information, Shleprocks was easy to dispatch, and the homeworld was turned over to Fugacious in payment (he still had a little to take out, but not much). The resistance quickly crumbled. There was no REAL reason for this...except that the enemy was demoralized. The other 3 members of the dark alliance never did attack me directly, but the combined might of Limericar and Shleprocks should have easily made short work of me. But, our generals were lucky. We were exceedingly good at ambushing hidden wings...and for some reason, not a single wing of ours was ever discovered before it's time. Nonetheless, the Tradjen slowly took losses, and fell to something like 17th place in the universe (maybe it was 13th, I forget). While the enemy's ability to command their forces properly disintegrated, they also went into hyerspace with invective and innuendo (in the wierdest online situation I've ever experienced). No problem. I'd prefer to fight a war of words. The truth wins in the end ;-). The Wrathe of Tradjen was not a poor commander. To the contrary, she is quite good. But, the true calling of the Tradjen were as mentalist, not to use brute force. The foe turned the contest to Tradjen's strong point rather than relying on their own strengths: weight and tactics (in past venues, Limericar's antecedents have shown themselves to be shrewd tacticians but not necessarily the best diplomats). [you got a thesaurus for xmas, right?] This chapter was behind the Tradjen by turn 13. The foes were vanquished. Where to grow? where to grow? That was the difficult question. Jerry had been part of the alliance, and he'd both backstabbed me and reneged on a promise for restitution multiple times. He was a prime candidate. On the other hand, I'd grown to like him and it would be joint suicide to take him on alone. NIN had helped the Tradjen simply by staying out of the war (and by repaying us what we'd earlier loaned them). In fact, if NIN had joined with Limericar and Shleprock, I doubt all the will in the world could have saved us. So, that avenue was out. Unknown had attacked a friend to my south, Mercator [Bill_Larson@ncsu.edu], while I was still cleaning up against Limericar's attacks, so there was an excuse there, but Fugacious (who was much bigger than me) would not countenance this. So, the the Wrathe of Tradjen did the next best thing...we arranged for Unknown to be attacked by NIN. We helped to fund and support this attack, and I later moved in massive forces to take a large number of resources. At the same time, we positioned forces to possibly attack Jerry. Rather than attack Jerry, though, Tradjen asked about Hell Hound [mindlink!a9899@rsoft.rsoft.bc.ca]. We were told that was "off limits" because Jerry, H.O.T., and Empire, were targetting Hell Hound. Again, being smaller, Tradjen backed off. Tradjen's forces then inadvertently then landed on Hell Hound anyway (I'd meant to position for Jerry, and move some forces towards the other remaining dark alliance member, Sundogs [scottn@jsp.umontreal.ca]). Hell Hound was going to be history soon regardless, but Tradjen chose to save his forces (I could take them out without loss if I'd chosen to do so), and took his worlds. The Tradjen ruler then councelled him on how to repay H.O.T., who, it turns out was trying to backstab the Tradjen. In a very interesting play, we'd told Hell Hound the story of what was up, including where we'd been going initially (to attack him), but changed our mind, etc. We'd also explained that others were attacking instead. Tradjen left nothing out and gave him the complete circumstances figuring it was better to be honest (plus, he's a pretty nice commander ;-). Simultaneously, H.O.T. told him Tradjen was secretly attacking Hell Hound...leaving out all the other detail. Hell Hound thought it was great, of course, and so did I ;-). So, Hell Hound, with help from the Wrathe of Tradjen,I designed a neat little trick against H.O.T....and destroyed a large part of H.O.T.'s forces. Now, in fairness, Tradjen earlier suggested allying with H.O.T. At the time, we still appeared weak, however, and he declined. Likewise with Empire. Empire, of course, did not trust me far at all, in particular because I'd prevented him from being one of the top 3 winners in SE6 [previous game] by various maneuverings. If H.O.T had not been trying to set me up against Hell Hound, I'd have been ammenable to working with him...but it was evident I could not trust him. Around turn 19 or so, I sent a message to GOD [me :-] stating that I intended to win the game with Fugacious, Argosy, and NIN. This was by no means a fait acompli...only NIN was actually allied to me ;-). But, the challenge was going to be to organize the universe so that this result would be evinced in the end. I'd have abandoned this goal if any other major player had asked to ally, perhaps. (Typically, this meant that when Empire or Midol or Unknown or Jerry or whomever, threatened to attack NIN, Fugacious, or Argosy, I stated my opposition to the move in the strongest terms. In all cases, it deterred the attacks. If one of the 3 launched the first strike, I let it be known I would not "intervene"...but they couldn't be attacked first.) Anyway, since H.O.T. and Empire were reluctant to commit to Tradjen, an ideal situation presented itself. Gravitons. I'll say right here that the best player by far in SE7 [this game] was Gravitons. He lost in the end, yes, but he showed great leadership abilities, and never gave up. I was very impressed. [she's also about to hit him up for money.] Gravitons organized a mighty assault against the Empire-H.O.T. axis. H.O.T. and Empire weren't nearly as closely allied as he thought (well, I don't think they were ;-), and he'd have done better in the end game if he'd not attacked them both at the same time. Tradjen was near to taking over the number one spot in the universe when they WERE attacked, however. It came at a good time because Hell Hound had done a masterful job at taking out a lot of H.O.T.'s forces due to a backstab here and there. Midol was inclined to pitch in, but Tradjen helped convince him not to (I forget how, but I did, I think ;-). Midol and Tradjen, instead, attacked Jerry. This was an interesting situation for me. One of the 3 of us had to go, and any two could have aligned together. Jerry, however, had spent most of the game over extended and was basically easy pickings. And, in one of the coups you pray for, in the attack, Tradjen captured a whole turn's worth of production on Jerry's capital. Up until this attack (around turn 24), we'd spent the previous 9 turns or so not losing more than a couple of ships...a really amazing observation since Tradjen went from probably 9th in the rankings in those turns to 1st place. Not quite sure how all that happened. [me neither] Some was negotiation, some lucky breaks, and some was lucky strategy coupled with effective tactics. Nonetheless, by this time the game was losing it's luster. The best part of SE is when resources are tight and your survival is tenuous at best. The rest of the game becomes much less exciting...Empire, H.O.T., and Jerry got knocked out. Tradjen attacked Gravitons just after Midol attacked Gravitons...who had been preparing to attack Gravitons as well (or something like that). I spent very little time doing my turns from turn 24 on in any case. In fact, I spent a lot of that time trying to find someone else to take over my turn since I had no time to run them properly (in fact, tactically, I have to admit I played very poorly from this point to the end game. I just didn't have the time or attention to really do intensive turn sheets. Instead, I relied on size to rectify errors). Tradjen also had several opportunites to gain a solo victory...and told GOD she was going for it the turn Argosy attacked ;-). However, Argosy backed down, and it wasn't necessary. Of course, it's easy to SAY you're going for the solo...and not so easy to do it. Still, there were a number of times Tradjen delayed an attack so that she would not go over the 5 percent rule [immediate victory, bragging notwithstanding]. Our goal by this point was to ensure that NIN, Argosy, and Fugacious could win. They'd all 3 helped Tradjen tremendously from either a resource standpoint or a morale standpoint when it was most needed. In the end, once Gravitons was bascially taken out, I conceded to the NIN-Fugacious-Argosy axis since I was confident they'd run the galaxy well. NIN, however, has said he felt better being the 4th empire and thought I should win. Not sure why that is ;-). Thanks for the fun, roger! Candyce -- \_____ \__ \__ \__ | Roger H. Lincoln | The activity of | \__ \__ \__ \__ \__ | MITRE Corp. | "debugging" ends when | \_____ \______ \__ | Bedford, MA | people get tired of | \__ \__ \__ \__ \_____ | rhl@mitre.org | doing it, not when the | \__ \__ \__ \__ \_____ | PGP key available | bugs are removed. | Up