I haven't seen other reply than goafans but I think this was 3v4 game as in 3 modders vs 4 pros.

I cannot say but star was probably feeding his team while goa in eco wasn't. He was actually fed for a while and he never tried to double someone. He waited for his teammates to die and then he fought himself.

It would be nice to see pros side of reply with teams peak chat and.... Just as "learning example" for modders and rest of ICO.   

I'm not trashing your game.

It's just that same problem that "handicapped" your team plague more than half of ICO. A lot of people don't know how to play in 4v4 or 5v5 games by assuming roles they are given by random map generator.

Are you saying I shouldn't have been ecoing up? I don't deny I made a lot of mistake in that game, mainly not paying attention to that mothership I sent to try and finish off Mecha's Sova, accidentally giving my later Progens colonize instead of shield restore, and most fatally thinking that Mecha would finish off Sparda's CPU instead of bee lining strait to my homeworld. But I was under the impression that in my position going full eco was the right thing to do.

Here's both of them just to make things easier.

I was planning on feeding them at the start but basically things feel apart so fast any amount of feed would have been futile. So I was like what the heck may as well fortify as much as possible so we might manage to inflict a few casualties on you. I realize starbases are rarely a good thing to do if you have any decent chance of winning.

Read back a little, it's in the thread, troll.

You sure about that? (in general, not with reference to this game)

(I play Vasari) When I'm in eco and my team isn't seriously disadvantaged, I usually prioritize expansion and planet colonization, so that I have around 6 planets 10-11 minutes into the game, and only after that (generally 12-13 minutes into the game) do I have enough spare funds to build my first trade port. This works best if there's a lot of territory between my allies and towards the middle for me to take, but not so well otherwise.

I do this sort of thing because there's a hard limit on how fast you can colonize planets, determined by how fast your 100-supply fleet can kill siege frigates and regenerate enough antimatter to colonize - however, trade ports have no real such limit, and can be built as soon as you have the funds. Focusing on taking planets quicker also provides a few more free logistics slots sooner.

As the game drags on towards the 1-hour mark or so, opposing eco players start becoming more likely to clash in the middle - at this point I want to have had my fleet to have colonized as many planets as possible, rather than having delayed a bit in the beginning to free up funds for trade ports a couple minutes sooner. (+200-500 credits?) More planets = more trade port slots. So I might be losing a temporary +6? credits/second for 3~ minutes in the first 15 minutes in exchange for an extra 2 planets with their logistics slots = +20? credits/second much later in the game.

Of course, prioritizing income over colonization is smarter if there simply aren't that many planets in your area to take, or if one of the allies on your flank is about to fall and you have to fleet up quickly.

What I noticed from the replay:

Krdax started by building some LFs and took 4 minutes to queue his first capital ship, which just sat on his HW for a few minutes . He built a SB on his front asteroid choke, which was run over by Howthe?'s 30 Assailants and Evacuator, which then melted his tiny fleet and flagship (which he didn't even try to retreat). Howthe? built and upgraded a SB on the asteroid for some reason. After a moderate delay Howthe? eventually brought his fleet back and easily ran over Krdax's undefended HW and then his last ice planet, where Krdax had heavily invested in a SB.

Draak started out with a whole bunch of scouts for some reason, took his asteroid, built some LRMs and was attacked on his HW by Auqia, who responded with Advent flak but retreated soon anyway, maybe out of feeling like being nice for a few minutes. Auqia felt like taking planets instead of killing Draak, who eventually made a weird halfhearted attack to take Auq's volcano next to Draak's HW but moved on to Auq's asteroid before killing the volcano. Auqia moved his fleet back into position and shredded Draak's LRM-based fleet with flak. On the asteroid a disappointingly large amount of time was spent by Draak simply moving his LRMs around (or reforming the fleet) instead of doing damage. Draak retreated back to his HW but his Kol died to Auqia's flak (lol) in combination with the Revelation's Reverie. Auqia's flak-based fleet then engaged Draak's now-flak based fleet on his HW. After a looong-ish fight, Auqia finally managed to kill Draak's other cap with only flak (lolol). Auqia started seriously countering with Disciples and Draak was done.

Goa in eco slot didn't really eco and built upgraded starbases on his planets (instead of maxing out on trade ports / feeding allies). Eventually after the others were dead, the combined forces of the pros killed Goa's SBs one by one and he was gone.

Sparda took a couple minutes to start queuing his cap, went civic and built Cobalts, but luckily found himself semi-able to eco due to many phase lanes separating him from the enemy flank. After taking his first asteroid past 7 minutes in, he attacked a very heavy militia Desert with his Sova and 4 Cobalts, which died but his cap retreated. He then built a few more Cobalts, went up the first supply level (didn't use it for a while), and attacked the Desert again. He eventually built a whole lot more Cobalts and was finally able to colonize the Desert at 24 minutes. Urgh. After fighting the militia on the volcano next to his HW, Sparda then attacked Mecha-Lenin, who had bypassed the pirates and had colonized a Terran near Sparda's territory. Mecha's much better income allowed him to easily out-spam Sparda (who forgot to upgrade his Volcano out of the red). Sparda lost his caps and fleet and ragequit.

I watched about 40 minutes, which was more than enough. 

First of all this was a 4s on a 5s map, which means take all the worst features of random 5s (and there are many), and add a couple more.  Had the teams been balanced, the modders side would still have struggled.  Draak had a poor position against Auqia, with Auqia having 2 roids to start him off and Draak's roid being on the wrong side of his home.  Krdax was in a better position but somewhat exposed and isolated between Auqia and How, with How just able to take a chain to planets straight to him.  Goa had the best position, though there were a few volcanics around.  Sparda was cramped by the pirates and had a heavily defended desert as his best option after his roid.  Star and How had many good planets and no conceivable threat.  

The eco figures when i stopped watching were 200+ for Star, 100+ for How and Mecha, and 18 for Auq.  Goa had 40+ while the other modders had 20, Krdax still having his home at that point.  However, the only feed in the game came from the modders, as Krdax had given up.  Sparda seemed desperately to want to consider himself an eco slot and fed as well.  Draak was the modder to profit.  I doubt that it is fair to Goa to suggest that he failed to participate, as the game was more or less over before he had a chance to, and he did attempt to attack Mecha with the few ships he had, losing a cap in the process, but buying Sparda enough time to colonise the volcanic next to his home.

The more glaring of the flaws in the modders game:

-Kols are just not useful capitals in this version and the modders had two.  The ship need a rework, as does the Radiance.  At least the Radiance has a 'tanking' ability though it lacks the ability to tank when it uses it and it is vulnerable to strike craft.  The Kol can be ignored, even Flak Burst has a very limited range.  Neither ship does any damage.  The Vasari have the only half-decent battleship and noone uses that either.

-The modders failed to colonise in a 'skilled' manner- that is to destroy siege, take the planet and build turrets to destroy militia.  I hate it, it is a huge hole in the game that the devs have never corrected.  The militia are supposed to be so clueless that they cannot fire on the constructor ships to prevent them building turrets, and as soon as the turrets are built they obligingly concentrate on them rather than anything else in the gravwell.  Mecha had one desert where he had three trade ports and there was still a militia heavy cruiser attacking turrets.  Colonisation is possibly the most important element in the game and yet it is so irrational as to be just plain wrong.  The entire mechanic should be reconsidered.  A swift change would be to prevent colonisation if there are any hostile ships (or hostile militia, perhaps) still in the gravwell.  

-Goa knew he was eco and Sparda wrongly considered himself eco because his hostile flank was choked by the pirates (which only starts to work if you have colonised all the planets on your side and Sparda wasnt fast enough).  However there was a three-extractor neutral next to Goa's roid and Sparda's home.  The extractors were eventually taken by Goa _thirty minutes_ into the game.  Sparda, on a roid and his home twenty minutes in, was supposedly ready to feed, or so he claimed in chat.  If you can't take easy neutral extractors no amount of theorycraft on trade ports will help you.

-Krdax's starbase, upgraded at least once.  Krdax complained that How was spamming Assailants, but this starbase took up a great deal of Krdax's limited funds.  Early starbases are dubious because they dont yet have the armour and shield upgrades, which makes a TEC starbase much like an immobile first level capital which gets no experience in combat- and you wouldn't build one of those, would you?  They also have very limited firepower.  If you really must use one, you need repair bays to help the health and turrets to augmennt the firepower, and Krdax had neither.  Also, the position it was in wouldn't have prevented How taking the roid, if that was what it was for.  Finally, there was nothing to stop How ignoring it and going straight to Krdax's home.  It would have meant damage to his fleet, but Krdax had insufficient ships to make anything from it.  Had Krdax spent all that money on LRF and left them at the roid, it would have been more of a deterrent and would have done more damage... about twenty LRF, roughly the same as the number How brought at first to destroy the starbase.

-Capital hunting is a classic AI error, but at least the AI tend not to chase supposedly damaged capitals over more than one gravwell.  Auqia was 'fortunate' to retain a capital with about 100 hull, but there was nothing fortunate about the manner in which Draaks fleet was then destroyed, which would have happened even had the Halcyon been destroyed.  When you attack capitals and the enemy attacks your fleet, the enemy capitals often level in the process.  If you are not motivated to try to save your capital, like Krdax, this won't hold true though.  

-When you say it was 4 vs 3, Star did nothing in the game to help his team at all up to when I stopped watching on 40 minutes, when it had been over for some time, other than to comment on it.  Another basic error is the failure to surrender.  ICO has always been unstable and prolonging games risks drops for the winning team.  Try to GG in good time.     

I'm not sure what this game was supposed to prove but why not play a modders vs ICO 'regulars' game next, rather than another game like this?  I'm sure that some of the often derided and sometimes last-picked regular 5s players would like a chance to demonstrate their skills too. 

This. DesConnor, please refer to my last post on page 9.

I'm just going to point out that the sandwhiched (safely) advent didn't really eco boom properly. In that situation, I would have done 10 scouts, (1 additional for scouting, 9 for assisting mothership), 1-2 colony (depending on scouted asteroid density) and then a mothership with them. You can boom pretty fast with that as any rate, and without anyone attacking you, the differences in eco in that strategy are negligable. You just kill korsov and lrms, and move on, colonizing. and it requires less fleet and cost, while doing it just as fast (maybe faster/fleet) then getting disciples.

The scout/colony cap strategy is definitely the most efficient but even many of the skilled players don't often use it, from what I've seen...

When I play vasa in eco i can usually start building trade when I have 4 planets colonized.