Thanks to Jay, these are MIRRORED maps … so starting positions are totally even-steven … so it’s a duel to the death. Default params, except 32 stars/large with Far distances, HomeStar is 10/10/3, Experimentation and Weapons are Expensive to Research, and Weapons start out at Level3 … to reduce randomness of Exp and game becoming a Weapon-Fest.
Winner of these games advance to the semi-finals for the FInal Four!
Kyrm joined and we’ve been trading turns back and forth all day. I wasn’t expecting the early offensive on turn two and he got a solid lead, but thanks to an early investment in industry I caught back up just fine and now we are pretty even.
Thanks for the update - just looking at the star distribution of your game, it looks crazy with various incursions to the right and left - good battling!
There’s not much information to go on as a spectator as you can only see stars, carriers, ships, and ship production … plus the map. From what I can tell, Mura appears to have a slight lead over Hipster and same for SuperDave over Nick.
Fafa and I just finished our first cycle, so too early to tell, but I made a mistake early on that may cost me the game.
P.S. How many turns/cycles have you guys completed so far?
We have 16 hours to go till cycle 3. The game is very even. We are playing nearly identical game strategies. The difference is that I went after Man as my first science while Nick got lucky and opened EXP on the 2nd cycle already. That gives me the early advantage on ship production now while he will get the later advantage the advanced exp will provide as we go along.
Cool to see people using different strategies - NP is much more interesting when it’s more than just a weapons-fest.
I actually originally had Exp as VERY Expensive … but scaled it back to just Expensive so it’s attainable if you want to go for it. Hats off to Nick for picking up on that and giving that a shot.
As the games play out, let me know what you think of the game params and any suggestions to improve play.
I went for the shortest route to the closest star, with that big gap in the middle it makes it so ships have to go to the edges and come back, got that 1 star on the opposite side of the map and Hipster won’t let me grab any more >.<
As soon as I get one he takes it back, I have a lead on industry and econ, but dude isn’t letting it count for much
Its pretty cool. Knowing what the star your heading to already looks like and where. Knowing what route you might take if in the enemies shoes. Becomes alot like chess game then with the turn based. Offence best here in NP aswell in these galaxies to get check mate!
yeah, I’ve used that fact to send a lone carrier and grab low resource stars that are probably empty
This gives me eyes to the center and forces my opponent to retake those stars, thereby disrupting his strategy
I’m probably being annoying as hell lol
@Krym - saw your comment in the other thread that your game has too many stars out of range - good point. There will always be some that require extra range, although if you play longgg enough, you’ll eventually be able to reach 'em … but I’ll try to reduce that in future maps. Basically means I have to regenerate it.
aye, your quite right most can be reached with 2 more range.
but the ones that need tech level 5 i was mainly speaking off.
if im ever in that mirror galaxy for 5 levels of range tech i might hurt myself irl … couple even need range 6. but yeah great maps. awesome work and effort really fun addition.
looks like our round one match will be over soon. we finished with range 2 each. neither if us really needed more so guess neither researched it.
in the galaxy we were in weapons level made such a big diffrence. and wasnt as expensive as id thought.
maybe duelling should use custom built twin pistols… as in maybe fixed at 3 weapons tech
I don’t think fixing it at 3 is a good idea
In my game I got a foothold on Hipsters territory and have been playing off of that to gain the advantage. 2 turns ago I launched an aggressive assault on HipsterFleet and was about to send up a clean up crew when he hit weapons 4.
Now he’s pushing back and until I get weapons 4, he’s able to rebuild his defenses and even gain some ground.
Were we stuck at weapons 3 I’m sure my slight advantage would grow and I’d win for sure. Allowing us to research weapons allows the underdog to make a comeback for researching first, making it super expensive is good too because it rewards your investment heavily. I can’t just get it with 1 day of research, it takes time, and in a tournament, time is too important to waste.
Also on the game, Hipster not only hit weapons but Manufacturing immediately after almost reaching my ship production. He’s definitely making some smart moves to get every advantage possible. My assault is stopped and now he’s building almost as fast as I am, my advantage is still based on my first move.
For our map I didn’t go for the higher resourse stars first though that’s normally a smart move. We got a weird map and I felt it prudent to get to our border immediately as we have only 2 attack points.
On one side I went as fast as I could to get to his territory quickly and closely watched if he was taking the shortest path or not. Watching the stars he took on that first jump gave me the idea and on my left side of the map I skipped stars so they didn’t show progress on the second jump.
My hope was he would think he could reach that side first and I timed it to land on a jump once his ships were already launched. Idk if he fell for it or it just worked out but I was able to defend against his first fleets and get a foothold on his territory. Having the advantage of +1 star and more ships with him having dumped on science, I was able to get my econ to almost double his.
He’s fighting an uphill battle but doing an excellent job of it, 1 mistake and this game will turn around and his fleets will be shuffling all over my territory >.<
i tend to think out loud dont mind me. but your right wouldnt be the game if didnt have all upgrades possible. really starting to like manufacturing aswell but Exp has been my tactic every game. did some light reading learned alot. Whos next ready for round 2
Hero played a smart game tbh he would sometime wait tick to move forward, i countered that with some bold forward movement. each time giving him chance to defend possibly i dies alot early… but with so many saves of overall time i gained foothold at stars i knew would have infrastructure. was half luck half planning but overall too much for any caustious enemy in mirror galaxies. my first game of turn based and tbh its pretty cool but i love some live action more i think real time games are great
Krym played really well and definitely bested me. I wasn’t expecting the offensive on round one that weapons 3 enabled, usually play starts slow with tactics aiming to grab defenders bonus.
I actually really like the idea of locked weapons level, as it is a clearly superior tech at almost any stage of the game. It’s an idea to toy with at least.
Range wasn’t an issue in our map at least, once we hit 2 we could hit most the important stars. As the game progressed we could have leveled up more to reach outer stars more, but it ended up not mattering.
Some reasons why weapons are started on Level3 and Expensive to research.
It doesn’t give the defender such a HUGE advantage early on … which means that sometimes the game can be decided early on by a ONE tick difference in arrival.
If you start out at Level1, whoever gets to Level2 first (lucky exp hit) has a HUGE advantage, especially in a 1v1 game.
Other techs can be finished much sooner, so makes sense to research those … rather than just being a race for Weapons.
Ditto for why they are Expensive
But you CAN research Weapons … which does make sense at some point … but figuring out WHEN to do that (and then forgoe’ing other techs) is tricky to figure out. Plus if you do get W4 first, that is not such an overwhelming advantage (versus W3) as W2 versus W1 would be.
Somewhat ditto why Exp is Expensive. A little bit of randomness isn’t a bad thing … but we don’t want the game decided by just whoever gets lucky from the Dice Gods. It’s a 32 stars/player galaxy (FAR distances) so hopefully enough game play can develop so the randomness evens out. Plus if you WANT to research it (as Nick apparently did) that’s a very viable strategy that may pay off.
You could do NONE for both Weapons and Exp … but now you are down to just 5 techs rather than 7 … and I think better to give you options.
Musrasak…your round 2…my game with Nick is probably going to take awhile to finish up. We aren’t making that many moves/day + the play is very even. We also only have one corridor to battle through so it’s tough to get an advantage and then hold it.
It’s fine, I’ve waited several months for the turn-based tournament to be unpaused, I’m sure I can wait a bit for Round 2.
I almost never play to win, but I really like these mirror maps, definitely up for a follow-up tournament
… couple even need range 6. but yeah great maps. awesome work and effort really fun addition.