Star Empires Game 5 - endgame summary

From: rhl@jambo.mitre.org (Roger Lincoln)

Date: Wed, 23 Feb 1994 01:07:00 +0000

Star Empires Game #5 is over.  The game started with 36 players and
after 33 turns (once per week) a 3-player alliance emerged victorious;
ranked in order of the total galactic resources they conquered they
are;

#1 Raven - Scot Hughes (falcon@binkley.cs.mcgill.ca) 29% of the galaxy
#2 Thecocytus - Scott Elliot (sjelliott@mmm.com) 28% of the galaxy
#3 Deathlok - Phil Miller (pmiller@mmm.com) 22% of the galaxy

Fittingly, their initials, T,R, & D, gave them the name they wore so
proudly, the TuRDs.  For the first time in the annals of Star Empires
all the members of the winning alliance are veterans and/or past
winners.  In fact, they were all bloodthirsty enemies in past games,
but somehow managed to restrain their inbred backstabbing instincts
long enough to form a very strong and unbeatable alliance about
halfway through this game.  To be fair to all the players I must
explain that this game of Star Empires used a new 2 dimensional map of
the universe and ships with limited speed, a big departure from the
original 1-dimensional, instantaneous travel used in previous games.
The location and richness of planets and players was randomly
generated, and some players started the game with big advantages of
rich nearby planets and no active neighbors.  Others lived in sparse
corners of the galaxy with lots of aggressive neighbors.  The skill
exhibited by many of the players who didn't win but nevertheless rose
above their initial conditions is truly exemplary.

At the end the empires who survived to surrender were...

Peacemaker - Tim Goldsbury (goldy@acanar.eng.sun.com)
  Gaultheria - Jim Batka (batkaj@ccmail.dayton.saic.com)
  Melchior - Michael May (BGYV@MUSICB.MCGILL.CA)
  Dark Ones - Louis Fillion (fillionl@JSP.UMontreal.CA)
  Patagonia - Allan Carroll (carroll@cs.uiuc.edu)
  JOE - Dave Black (black@sdfvax.rc.trw.com)

This game, moreso than previous games, was characterized by alliances
forming and breaking up violently and at whim.  This is probably due
to the fact that this was the first game of SE that used the new 2
dimensional galaxy, and players had to get used to dealing with
neighbors and borders.  As one of the winners so succinctly put it,
"This game was quickly reduced to allying with neighbors until you
needed to expand, then choosing one neighbor and stabbing them."

Case in point, the inimitable Deathlok; after working with Cavalan
(Jeff Berry, nexus@isis.cgd.ucar.EDU) to very early destroy Berferd
(Jason Crane, jj@wam.umd.edu) they then turned their sights on
Vorkall (described by one player as "tenacious as a tick", a
compliment, sort of).  Deathlok weaseled Cavalan into attacking
Vorkall first and thereby taking the brunt of the counterattack.
Vorkall fought bravely and intelligently, the attackers got bogged
down and needed to include Thecocytus to finish him off.  Afterwards
Cavalan was left so weak and so tempting that Deathlok and Thecocytus
"absorbed" him without a second thought.

Early on a major alliance developed that looked to me like it had the
potential to win, a 2 empire alliance with Underdog (John Woolsey,
wool8657@mach1.wlu.ca), and Black Hand (William Bruvold,
wbruvold@weber.ucsd.edu).  Underdog quickly rose to the #1 rank and
became a very large empire for so early in the game.  Then something
happened which had never before happened in any of the games though
I'd seen it attempted many times - other empires actually banded
together and cooperated to take down Underdog and Black Hand.  Many
times in past games, very late in the game, one player would realize
what a threat the #1 player was and would try to rally everyone else
to attack them, but other players always had their own agendas, and
sure enough #1 would go on to win the game.  But this game was
inspiring; it was still very early in the game (somewhere around turn
8) and the other players were still fighting their own petty little
wars, but someone (I don't know who this unsung hero was) banded
together a bunch of the smaller empires and attacked Underdog and
Black Hand mercilessly.  The main aggressors were...

Melchior,
  Peacemaker,
  Enstar (Bob Hale, Bob_Hale@smtp.esl.com)
  Aramis (not the perfume! :) (Craig Brown, brown_c@sdfvax.rc.trw.com)
  Nameless (Greg Kirkpatrick, gjk1@midway.uchicago.edu)

Together they attacked Underdog and Black Hand at several planets.
Underdog had the largest single fleet in the game, but the combined
might of the 5 alliance members, plus the ever opportunistic
Thecocytus who showed up after most of the carnage, overwhelmed the
tightly allied Underdog and Black Hand.  Within 4 turns the two
ex-leaders were no longer a force in the galaxy.

Raven, meanwhile, had been negotiating with Underdog but planned on
coming in on the winning side.  During the big battles Raven himself
was occupied elsewhere in a major attack on the Vorlons (Jonathan Roy,
ninja@halcyon.halcyon.com).  By the time the Vorlons were defeated it
was obvious Underdog was doomed, so Raven moved to quickly grab 3 or 4
of his ex-worlds.  Unfortunately most of Raven's fleet was positioned
to the south after the Vorlons campaign and could not make it to
Underdog space in time to grab more.  Growing desperate for conquests
and recognizing that Aramis and his triumphant alliance would soon be
a threat to him, he attacked Aramis on all his worlds.  Aramis was
unprepared for this attack, I believe he and Raven had a border treaty
at the time, so his forces were deployed at his other borders.  The
bulk of his empire fell within a few turns.

Raven now had to face the wrath of Aramis' alliance, with Melchior
ready to counterattack immediately.  With Raven desperately trying to
convince Aramis' other allies not to come after him, Thecocytus
(ranked #2 by then) contacted Raven (ranked #1) with a proposition, he
would take on Melchior while Raven concentrated on Aramis.  Raven
quickly agreed and the two formed a loose alliance.

The other big alliance that formed early in the game was known as the
East-West alliance, named because if you stood on your head and
squinted they formed up in an east-west line (?) (I never saw it
myself).  The driving force behind this alliance was the ever-slimy
Guzzler (Robert Feinstien, robert@chem.UCSD.EDU) who knitted together
an imposing bunch of empires with promises of home-brewed beer, which
I would like to legally state I in no way condone or encourage (I
prefer wine coolers myself). The alliance included...

Guzzler,
  Cavalan,
  Weeble (David Gibbs, dagibbs@qnx.com)
  Smurf (Jennifer Miller, JMILLER@crcvms.unl.edu)
  Peeper (Tim Myers, tmyers@unlinfo.unl.edu)
  Rorschach (Mike Odowick, smellack@crash.cts.com)

They doomed themselves when they nominally included Deathlok,
Thecocytus, and Raven, who weren't yet allied but were each drooling
at the prospect of using the alliance for their own ends.

If it had remained cohesive this alliance would have easily won (were
it not for the Rule that limited winning the game to a maximum of 3
players).  However, there were three complications that I believe led
to its downfall, First and perhaps foremost, the failure of Guzzler to
deliver on the beer promise.  Second, the series of battles that came
to be known as "the Druidic Wars"; and third, the ability of
Thecocytus, Deathlok and Raven to smell carrion at even interstellar
distances.

The Druidic Wars were perhaps the most significant battles because
they spanned almost the entire length of the game, involved directly
or indirectly most of the major empires of the game, and they were
accompanied by rousing stories from four of the combatants.  They
began around turn 3 or 4 when Patagonia (a defensive genius), who was
plotting with Dark Ones to attack Smurf, was preemptively attacked by
Smurf and Peeper.  After some initial reverses Patagonia began to
prevail over Smurf and had come to an "agreement" with Peeper.  The
east-west members began to secretly finance Smurfs continued attack on
Patagonia by shipping huge amounts of resources to her
homeworld. Patagonia countered by recruiting Dark Ones into the war
and gathered a little support from Raven.  With their help he began to
beat down Smurf, who began ceding her worlds to Peeper while
maintaining a strong front against Patagonia.

Smurf made one last big push on turn 11, attacking several Patagonia
worlds, unfortunately she ran straight into traps Patagonia had set
and her attack fleets were quickly vaporized ("vaped" in vet
lingo). However, it was at this time that Rorschach became active in
the attack against Patagonia.  Pat's nominal allies, Dark Ones and
Raven, would not come to his aid.  With Rorschach pounding at
Patagonia's planets, Smurf launched her last 2 Fleet Carriers on a
kamikaze raid designed to destroy the Planetary Defense Center at
Patagonia's homeworld and open it up to Rorschach.  Despite the 2
carriers taking different courses, in an amazing feat of tactical
planning Patagonia intercepted them in deep space with two of his
light cruiser groups and destroyed them and their strike wings before
they could do any real damage, and thus effectively ended the Smurf
empire.

Peeper and Rorschach were now heavily committed against Patagonia and
paying dearly.  Other East-West alliance members were also fairing
poorly; Melchior was caught off guard when his ally, Thecocytus,
attacked him in order to free up Raven to take out Aramis.  Melchior
held off Thecocytus for the remainder of a long game and earned the
deep respect of his foe, who nonetheless reduced his fleets and empire
to rubble.

Meanwhile, Deathlok who was still part of the East-West alliance,
suddenly turned on his ally Rorshach for reasons I don't fully
understand.  Rorschach was livid with rage and turned all his efforts
to Deathlok, however the Druidic Wars had so weakened him that he
didn't stand a chance.

Deathlok was by this time partnered with Thecocytus (neither Deathlok
nor Raven knew Thecocytus was allied with the other) and they both
took on Weeble, and the East-West alliance crumbled.  This series of
battles gave Deathlok and Thecocytus a common border with Raven. Since
they were now ranked 3, 2, and 1 respectively, and had found out
eachother's real identity (the game is played anonymously), they
turned aside centuries of mistrust from previous games and formed the
fated alliance.

By turn 25 the TuRDs had conquered more than half the galaxy.  Victory
was almost assured, the only hope for the surviving empires was for
internal strife to put the TuRDs at eachother's throats, and all who
knew their real identities new this was a definite possibility.
Patagonia and Gaultheria, though knowing they could not share in the
victory, nevertheless fought on their side against the remaining
empires.  Raven became the target by virtue of the shear size of his
empire, but even the combined strengths of the rebels couldn't hurt
Raven.  Thecocytus and Raven then entered into a "friendly" challenge
to see who would be ranked #1 when the end came.  A little dealing by
Thecocytus ala Oliver North to try and finance attacks against Raven
almost sparked a confrontation between the two, but once Raven found
out about it Thecocytus yanked his hand out of the cookie jar and
stopped his activities.

The TuRDs began earnestly broadcasting messages calling for the
conditional surrenders of all surviving empires.  All but one empire
did accept the surrender conditions, when suddenly and without warning
something amazing happened - Armageddon.  Through an inexplicable
freak of nature/emacs every ship in the galaxy suddenly materialized
together in one barren spot in deep space.  The opposing commanders
quickly sized up eachother and just started blasting away.  It was the
single greatest orgy of destruction I have had the pleasure of
witnessing.  2400 ships suddenly brought into close quarters with
eachother, opened fire mindlessly, and in two turns 1600 ships and
crews perished among the deadly beams and missiles.  All armed
resistance had been destroyed.  Of the over 7000 ships built during
the course of the game, only 800 were left alive.  Some were crippled,
some unscathed, but they all flew the TuRD flag (not a pretty sight) -
Raven, Thecocytus, and Deathlok reign supreme.  Bow your heads and
spit.