DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

+135

[TA beta 5-] A Thalan demonstration

I heard that some people didn't know how to play as the Thalans, so I decided to make an AAR about me playing them, and how I can use them to conqour the galaxy.

The setings I used were:

-All victory conditions on.

-Default game options, except for blind exploration, which is on.

-All galaxy settings set to common except for asteriods and minor.

--Minors were disabled, and asteriod were set to Abundant.

My setup for the Thalans involved maxed out military production, followed by economic bonuses. I did this by spending my points and selecting industrial party to do this. The rest of my points went into ecomonomics. This will allow me to mass produce ships and help to provide the economic backbone to support such production. Considering the high maintaince cost for many Thalan structures, an economic bonus would prove useful.

I picked 5 other civs, all random and set to tough.

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I will be posting this AAR in 3 parts, the 3 game periods that I played.

*By the way, this is my first AAR post. Let me know if I do an ok job.

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DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

+135

Play Period 01

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Event 01

I started in a corner of a galaxy. This might prove useful for my defense.

I decided to research some cheap techs, such as "Remedial Engineering" to get my civ started.

As for colony ships, I decided to upgrade my first one to a design I made in a previous game. This model was designed specifically for the Thalans, to help counter the Thalan population growth penalty. It uses 2 colony modules, instead of 1, allowing it to truck around twice the population to give a colony a larger base population to start growing from.

Once the upgrades were done next turn, I filled her up and sent her on her way.

As for my homeworld, I wanted to try to make as much influence as possible, to become that infamous pink blob of doom. As such, I built that special Thalan structure on top of a food bonus tile. I'll worry about morale on that world latter.

As for my spendings, I decided to start out with 50/50 mil and research. It didn't serve me much good to waste money on social production due to a relative lack of structures to build.

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Event 02

Taking a early look at the galaxy I couldn't find very many planets that I could colonize, but I did find some galactic resources that I could take advantage of.

My custom scout ship did a reasonbly good job of scouting, I decided to build a few more.

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Event 03

My solution to the lack of industry buildings was to build a starport on every planet, and use the points I spent into military production, bonuses I got for industrial party, and bonuses from some techs to augment my production.

I was able to get a custom colony ship to be produced every 3 turns from my homeworld. That, and the ships I was getting from my other worlds helped me to nab more worlds and galactic resources.

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Event 04

After a my empire grew a little bit, I eventually found my neighbours, the Drengin and the Torians. I find some stiff competition for new planets to colonize.

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Event 05

The time came where my initial supply of money ran out, and I was forced to make changes before I got too far into dept to do anything. I foresaw this problem and had researched some tech for economic structures, and was able to change the slidders to 100% social production. I was making money again in no time.

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Event 06

--Preparing for war

Somewhere along the line, I managed to research generation 2 laser weapons and researched "Xeno Ethics". I decided to make the choice and become neutral.

At this point, I decided to go with my ussual strategy and develop medium hulls. I decided to leave some space open to reduce the cost of production, reduce maintaince costs, and give me some freedom to upgrade them later.

As for targets, both the Torians, and Drengin had most of their planets within striking distance. I should also start building transports while I prepare to fight them.

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--Overview--

I managed to claim dominance over an entire side of the map, and a large chunck of possible influence to go with it. I also got plenty of galactic resources as well.

Having researched techs to get influence planetry structures, my I was able to develop my homeworld's influence to the point where it pushed back hard against the Drengin's. Plus the income it gave wasn't bad either.

I did all of this without building any factories at all. I guess not having factories early on isn't a big of deal as what some people make it to be.

The civs that I discovered were the:
-Drengin
-Torians
-Drath
-Yor
-Korx

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DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

+135

Play Period 02

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Event 01

The Torians are losing...

It turns out that the Torians, the once mighty empire oppresing evil, had been at peace for far too long. Their enemies have since grown stong have, in turn, declared war on them. Even the Korx, who were not involved in the first war, have joined the fight.

Since I'm not currently involved, I'm free to collect the resources that the Torian enemies have so generously freed up. I can take my time to build up my military, and research advanced tech until I can expand my empire. Such is the way of those who do not align themselves to such foolish idealogy such as good and evil.

However, being neutral does not mean I'm indifferent. I am aware that the Drengin, Yor, and Korx will too try to destroy my empire, so it would be foolish of me to ignore the Torian crisis. My solution to the problem is to offer some of my ships to the Torians, in exchange for their technology. All of it.

However, the Torians appear to be doomed at this time. It may be productive for me to be ready to invade Toria should it fall to one of their enemies. In a weakened state, I would be fight off even the Drengin without too much difficulty.

I need to start preparing...

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Event 02

Although the Torains managed to make peace with several civs, including the Drengin, but the Yor managed to persist in their aggression until the Torians surrendered to them. Initially, I considered attacking the Yor before they managed to start using their new planets. However, I was able to buy Toria, get a significant boost to my influence, and at the same time, deprive the Yor of that advantage.

I set my sights on Drengi... Their current war with the Drath has left most of their ships on the front lines, away from their home... and even further from me...

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Event 03

After considering how to deal with the Drengin, I decided to use my superior research industry (and already maxed out miniturization) to create a ship that was effectively invunerable to the missle weapons that the Drengin were using.

Although I could of built better, the "Pst M-7 LP-37" was already plenty expensive. It took several thousand BC to upgrade just one of my older ships, let alone to build them from scratch. But such technicallities did not matter. My new ship had more than twice the missle defense than the Drenin ships had in terms of missle attack. Inaddition, the Drengin had not bothered to give their ships any defense, so I didn't need super powerful weapons to take down their ships.

It didn't take long. I was able to quickly conquor Drengi using their shock troops tech I managed to steal from one of their worlds left far from the rest of their empire. My overwhelming influence ability, even with low population levels of Drengi, had already encouraged one the Drengin planets to start revolting. It didn't take long for the rest to do the same as well.

I had placed one of my left of troop transports used to invade Drengi, placed it in orbit around Drengi along with one of my super anti Drengin ships. Out of Despiration, they tried to retake their world, only to fail against my overwhelming defense.

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Event 04

The Drengin knew that they were beat. Out of spite, they surrendered to the Drath. Such a move would show to be ineffective since most of their worlds were deep within my cultural influence. Most of their remaining worlds would in time, revolt to me.

Since the Drengin empire was little more than a mess of pirate ships to clean up, I started looking at the remaining civs. Both the Torains and Drengin were no more. The Drath, Korx, and the Yor still remained. I considered attacking the Yor, and making an alliance with the Drath since they weren't far behind, military speaking (as were the Korx), but the Drath relations with me were no longer close. Only the Torians, and the Drath had reached that point.

I however noticed that both the Drath and the Korx were using mass drivers, and the Yor were using lasers. I decided to prepare to attack the Drath and the Korx at the same time. The close proximity of their home worlds to each other might place a stronger stranglehold of culture to them, than what I did to the Drengin.

I started to research a new hull size, and armour to deal with them. In addition, since I managed to steal some missle tech from the Drengin, I figured I would change my choice of weapons in case my enemies tried to adapt to my weapons.

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--Overview--

I was probally running around with the most influence and most of the galactic resources at this point. I managed to buy some tech that boosted my research, including some new research structures. They were cheaper to maintain, and quicker to build, than anything I could research myself, and yet, they were just as productive.

Since I had already planed to design completely new ships, and had already had a impressive military, and had recently collected many galactic resources that needed development, I switched my attack ship production to constructors. I kept building up transports for later.

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DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

+135

Play Period 03

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Event 01

The Korx Surrendered...

The Korx could not hold their own against both the Yor and the Drath. The Korx surrendered to the Yor before I was able to take some of their worlds. Forutunately, I was able to buy the Korx homeworld from the Yor, though, at a high price.

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Event 02

--Influence victory in 10 turns...

Having bought the Korx homeworld, it didn't take long for me get over 75% of the culture in the galaxy. I however did a quick check to see if thats the victory I wanted.

Looking at the Yor, I noticed that they continued to grow in military power while the Drath continued to lose it. Inaddition, I had close relations to the Yor, so I offered them an alliance, bought their Terror Drones tech, and started invading the Drath using my newly developed weapons.

I went for their homeworld...

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Event 03

The Drath surrendered...

It didn't take long for me to get most of the Drath's worlds to start revolting to me (and some of the Yor's as well). The combined aggression of my new allies, the Yor, and myself, the Drath quickly realized that they were beat. They surrendered to me.

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--Overview--

Two civs surrendered and an alliance was forged in a short period of time that I played this time around. The mighty Thanlan empire had proved their might using only some of their mighty weapons on the battle field. No enemy had proved themselves mighty enough to be require the best that this empire could build.

How did I win? First fought with a strong military production. With that, I could build ships quickly without relying on factories to do so and, at the same time, avoid the upkeep costs that comes with factories. This allowed me to expand quickly without burning a big hole in my wallet.

Once I was able to build factories, I could build ships very quickly. Considering my bonuses had more than doubled my military output, I was building ships quickly, even when I using low military spedings.

Another thing I did was, boost my influence very high levels using whatever tools I could use. I kept collecting homeworlds so I could not only cause worlds from other civs to be revolting, but to also deprive my enemies of the wealth that comes with a large sphere of influence. Because I was able to get worlds to culture flip to me, I didn't need to build transport to take every world. Not only did that save me logistics trouble, but it also saved me from dealing with the Thalan poor population growth, and small population sizes due to lack of farms.

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Nice read! Try intelligent next time.

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Good read.
I will use some of it in my upcoming Crynn Jihad.

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DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

+135

I was thinking I would get more replies. Maybe I should work on how I present my stuff.

Nice read! Try intelligent next time.

Probally should. I've been putting off harder difficulties.

Good read.
I will use some of it in my upcoming Crynn Jihad.

Your welcome. Feel free to let me know what you found useful.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

I was thinking I would get more replies. Maybe I should work on how I present my stuff.

I don't read many AARs, but your presentation seemed fine to me. Maybe I'm cutting you too much beta slack, but I don't think so. It's also true that Thalans are not the most popular civ to play, so we have the "minority" thing going on.

If it's any consolation, I didn't reply earlier because you gave me plenty to think about and I've had very little time to putter with the beta.

I've been doing a crappy job as a volunteer tester. If I'd been better, I'd have some notes that probably could complement your basic arguments that the new Thalans aren't unplayable, they're just really weird and have some serious vulnerabilities to map problems. As far as I can tell, it is Game Over if you start without a couple of fairly plump planets and a couple of good resources in Thala's immediate neighborhood, at least on the largest maps.

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This was presented in my favourite style. I don't do story AAR's, and some of the play example AAR's are too heavy on the numbers. I've never played Thalans myself, so thanks for posting this.

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