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Mar 5th, 2014 at 00:41:28 - Master of Orion (PC) |
Since I discussed basic mechanics in the first playthrough, I’m going to discuss broader topics in this one. I left off having wiped out the Alkari. Soon after that I met the Sakkara, a lizard race whose talent is rapid population growth. Three turns later they declared war on me. This seems to be the theme of this campaign. Their empire controlled about one quarter of the map in the upper right corner, with the Psilon scattered about in the center of it. At this point I controlled the bottom third of the map, and due to a string of uninhabitable systems except for Orion, which I’ll discuss later, I couldn’t reach the upper left corner. My fleet at that point was very large, but owing to the size of their empire and how it shared a fairly large border with mine I had to spread it out to prevent them from taking over my territory.
At its heart Master of Orion is about resource management and territory control. Every colony you own expands the area your ships can travel, as do certain technologies. Technologies also increase speed. If your speed is higher than your enemy’s and your range is far enough you can send ships to where they are not currently concentrating their fleet and damage their systems. Likewise you have to be on guard against them doing the same to you. You can also build up base defense. Practically this limits the enemy’s action as it forces them to use a large fleet to attack your planet. Meaning that by building up a planet’s defenses you have less need to use your fleet to defend it and can use your fleet to attack instead. You take over territory by spending population on planets to send troops. This means that the planets you send them from need to recover that population to be at full production, plus you need to spend resources to defend newly conquered planets. So while going all out and conquering as many planets as you can weakens your enemy, it also leaves you with a large number of planets with no defenses built up to protect.
Due to having built up the fleet in my previous wars, and due to my races higher level of production, I was able to take Sakkara territory at a fairly swift pace. I concentrated on building large numbers of small ships, so while each of their ships was stronger than mine I overwhelmed them with higher numbers and could easily replace my losses. Over time I took over the center area of the galaxy, and in doing so met the Darlok, a race with strong spies, who occupied just two systems deep in Sakkara territory, and the Humans, whose special talent in this game is diplomacy, which is something this game has, but owing to my constant state of war I honestly haven’t used much in this campaign. Once I beat the Sakkara back I was again faced with the Psilons, but since they were both in the same direction from me I basically treated them as a single enemy. Over the course of the game I was able to nearly wipe them out when the Humans declared war on me, as expected, and forced me to move some of my forces to defending from them.
The humans could only reach one of my colonies so I concentrated on building its defense up, and when I did my fleet was freed to attack the Sakkara again. They asked for a peace treaty, but I ignored it as they were at this point I had destroyed the vast majority of their fleet and was just going from planet to planet destroying its defenses and sending troops. I exterminated the Psilons during this campaign as well.
The humans attacked one of my recently conqured Sakkara colonies, but I decided to let it fall in favor of finishing off the Sakkara. Once they were done I gathered my fleet where the humans were attacking. They had a moderately large fleet, but with all of my fleets gathered together I was able to beat it and retake the planet, with significant losses.
At this point my fleet was still somewhat large, but was using outdated technology which was largely why the losses against the humans had been so high. Since you can only have six types of ship in this game at any one time keeping your fleet up to date often means scrapping large numbers of ships, especially when you concentrate on quantity over quality as I did. This posed a problem for taking over the human territory, but due to gaps in habitable planets there were only two directions they could attack from, so I concentrated on building up defenses in those planets and instead took my ships to take over the two Darlok systems. They hadn’t actually declared war, but would have sooner or later, and I couldn’t afford to have them attack so deep into what was now my territory while I was occupied with fighting the humans. They fell quickly and I began the process of scrapping my fleet and re-designing it. Owing to controlling two-thirds of the map at this point I was able to build a new fleet quickly, with each ship being on par with the human ones and having about three times their number. I sent my entire fleet for an all-out assault on the human home world, where they were holding their fleet, and destroyed most of it. I then spread my fleet out to their remaining worlds and destroyed their defenses. With their fleet destroyed I simply sent a bunch of troops in from multiple planets at once and took over their entire empire very quickly, ending the game with me as the sole survivor.
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Mar 4th, 2014 at 23:38:47 - Master of Orion (PC) |
As Master of Orion plays can go rather long, I’ll be doing both my playthroughs on the same campaign, playing for three hours for the first playthrough, and continuing the campaign and playing to completion on the second. On the first playthrough I’ll be discussing the basics of gameplay and the interface.
On opening Master of Orion (In the dosbox emulator as it won’t play natively on windows) you’re immediately taken to a screen with four options; Continue Game , Load Game, New Game, and Quit To Dos. The first option takes you to the last turn of the last game played on your computer, Load Game allows you to go to any manually saved game, New game takes you to the options for starting a new game, and Quit to Dos quits the game.
First I selected New Game which gave me options for Galaxy Size, Difficulty, and Opponents. Galaxy size can be small, medium, large, or huge. Difficulty can be Simple, Easy, Average, Hard, or Impossible. Opponents selects the number of other races on the map and can range from one to five. I selected a small galaxy size, easy difficulty, and five opponents to make a game that would be eventful, but hopefully not too long. The game then lets you choose from 10 races. The races play identically except for one advantage unique to each of them. I chose the Klackon, an instect-like race that have increased production from workers. Then I started the game.
The game starts on a screen with three areas. The first area takes up most of the screen and shows a view of the local area of your galaxy. I’m starting near the bottom right corner of the galaxy. This can be advantageous because it means other races won’t be surrounding you on all sides, but it also means that you could find yourself stuck without many habitable planets nearby to colonize.
The second area of the screen is on the right side and shows the planet on the system you clicked on (each star has only one planet) It shows the planet type (Terran, Ocean, Jungle, Dead, Inferno, Irradiated, etc.) as well as the maximum population a colony could have and in the case of your own planets the current population, number of defensive bases, production, several bars for where you are spening your production (Ships, Defence, Industry, Ecology, and Technology) and each of these has a bar which represents the percentage of your production going to it, and a ship screen which lets you choose which ship you are building as well as relocate where your ships initially show up when built and transfer colonists.
The third area is a bar on the bottom with buttons labeled Game, Design, Fleet, Map, Races, Planets, Tech, and Next Turn. I’ll go over the functions of those buttons as they are used in the playthrough.
To start out only one world has a name under it, my race’s homeworld of Kholdan. It’s a Terran world with 100 max population, which is true of every races starting world. On the top right of the world is an icon of a ship. Clicking it brings up in the right bar a list of ships that are on the world. To start with I have two scouts and a colony ship. I immediately send my scouts out to nearby systems to explore them. The nearest system has an arid system, which is habitable, so I send my colony ship to it, and found a new colony when it reaches there.
On my home system I have my production set primarily to industry, with just enough ecology to prevent waste, which lowers your population). The game will automatically keep ecology at the lowest level that does not produce waste unless it is told to do otherwise.
After many more turns I have explored all of the local area I can reach with my current level of fuel technology (each level allows you to travel to a fixed distance from your nearest colony) and found two more habitable planets I can reach. Once my home planet has built all the industry it can I switch it over to ship building and build the two colony ships to colonize those planets, after which I switch it over to technology.
On the technology screen there are six basic types, Computers, Construction, Force Fields, Planetology, Propulsion, and Weapons. You research one upgrade, chosen from a list, for each type and all types are researched simultaneously, with an option to choose what proportion of research goes to each type. While researching a light bulb fills up representing research points , once filled a number shows up in it’s place which represents the percent chance you will gain the technology on the next turn, this number increases as further research is put into it. Once a technology in a field is gained, a new one can be selected and research begins again from zero points.
Over time I research the technology to travel farther, and I find several dead planets nearby, from researching Planetology I soon gain the ability to construct colony ships which can colonize those worlds, and I build the ships and colonize the worlds. It’s then that I meet the first two other races simultaneously. You meet a race when you have a colony in range of one of their systems. I meet the Alkari and the Psilons. On meeting them I go to the races button on the bottom menu which lets you control diplomacy and spying. You can allocate resources to spy defense which gives you a chance to destroy enemy spies, you can also allocate resources to spys for each race and choose from having them hide, conduct sabotage, or conduct espionage. I build up my spy defense and set spying to espionage for both races.
I manage to steal some technology from the Psilons, then, for no reason whatsoever, they declare war on me.
As there is only one world in their range I increase its defense, then I click the design button on the bottom menu. This lets you create a ship from your currently available technology, there are four sizes small to huge, and there are a great many options for engines, armor , computers, weapons, and special systems. You can have six designs active at any given time, and can only have ships from an active design, meaning that to create designs for ships using newer technology you need to scrap obsolete ships. This gives you a bit of a limitation in that redesigning ships often means scrapping a sizable portion of your fleet. I have some designs with no ships so I scrap them and make a newer small and medium type with better weapons and engines than the default design. I immediately change my worlds to building these new ships and move them to the star nearest to the Psilon world.
Once a decent fleet is built up I attack the world. Ship combat takes place on a grid with each ship type moving during its turn and attacking if it’s able. Multiple ships of one type are controlled as a single unit. The defender’s planet is stationary on the grid and can launch missles if it has bases. The fight ends when all ships and bases on one side have been destroyed or have retreated. I win the battle owing largely to having a much larger fleet.
I go to one of my inner worlds with high population and transfer a large number of it to the enemy world, which is how you invade worlds. While they are en route I bomb the world for several turns, reducing its population enough for the invading force to take it over and make it my colony. At this point the Alkari declare war on me, possibly from a treaty with the Psilons. My fleet has been continuing to build up while I was waiting for troops to reach the Psilon world, so I send it to the Alkari world and do the same with it. Once it is taken over there is a GNN (Galactic News Network) broadcast that the Alkari are extinct, so apparently that was their only world. The Psilons still have worlds, but they are fairly distant and can only reach the world I conqured, so I begin building up defenses and switch back to concentrating on research. Then the Sakkara contact me, and I start building up spys in their empire set to hide. At this point I have reached my time limit for the first playthough, so I save the game and leave it for later.
Overall the game has played fairly quickly. It is easy to get sucked in to it and lose track of time. In retrospect I probably should have played at a higher difficulty because I was able to defeat two other races far too easily to fully explore the battle mechanics.
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Feb 9th, 2014 at 19:34:03 - Checkers (Other) |
For the second log I'll focus more on the strategy of the game.
During the second game I chose to adopt a more aggressive style of play. Checkers can be played defensively by focusing on making sure pieces have other pieces to block an opponents attempts to jump, or agressively by attempting to move pieces so that they can quickly capture opponents pieces and move to the other side of the board.
Moving defensively will prevent you from losing pieces early on, but has the drawback of limiting your options as fewer and fewer spaces become available. The primary risk in a defensive strategy is that your opponent will be able to force you to make poor moves simply for lack of options, although the same risk can apply to them as well.
Moving aggressively typically allows you more freedom, but by not protecting your pieces as well that freedom often comes at the sacrifice of more pieces during the early game. The primary risk of playing aggressively is that your opponent may be able to prevent you from moving pieces to the opposite end of the board and get kinged pieces, and that they may be able to exploit weaknesses in your defense in order to reach your side more quickly.
My aggressive style gave my opponent an early lead and they exploited some openings to get a piece across the board and get it kinged. However, due to the location of their kinged piece it was blocked by a piece on my right side and another piece on my back row that would be able to capture it if it moved. I meanwhile was able to get a piece to the other side to be kinged by sacrificing another to free a path for it.
Sacrificing a piece so another can be kinged is typically considered a good tradeoff, as the extra degree of motion kings have usually make them much more valuable than normal pieces. When my piece was kinged the opponent was forced to make another jump which prevented them from moving pieces out of the way for a three piece jump which my new king made.
This placed my king in an ideal position, by moving by back piece which had been able to jump my opponent's king the opponents king forward, I was able to force my opponents king to capture it, moving it into a position from which my king could capture it on the next turn, leaving me with the only kinged piece on the board.
My opponent continued to attempt to move pieces forward for three moves without presenting any obvious avenues to capture pieces. After the fourth I noticed an opportunity, moving a piece forward I forced my opponent to capture it, which in turn set one of my pieces up to jump twice and reach the other side of the board.
My opponent moved their piece forward to be kinged and I captured another of my opponents pieces with my newly kinged checker. At this point I pointed out to my opponent that they could make no moves that would not result in me winning in two moves, and he conceded the match.
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Feb 9th, 2014 at 19:01:10 - Checkers (Other) |
For the first log entry I'll go over a game and discuss the basics of gameplay. The game begins on an 8x8 chess board with 12 red and 12 white game pieces for two players on opposite ends of the board oriented so that each player has a black square in their near left corner. The red game pieces are placed on the black squares of the first three rows of the first player's side of the board, and white game pieces placed on the black squares of the second player's side. The red player moves first and can move a piece one square diagonally into any open spot. Pieces can move only diagonally onto adjacent black unoccupied squares, and can normally only move forwards.
I moved my piece second from the left in the front row forward and to my left. The opponent moved his piece to my front left row forward into the wall. For a time we both moved defensively until I moved one of my left pieces forward to force him to capture it. Pieces can capture pieces from the opposing team by "jumping" over them. A piece jumps by going over an opposing piece diagonally when there is an open square in the next space. If a piece jumps to a location from which it can jump again, it must do so immediately. In checkers, if a player can make a jump, they must do so. If more than one jump is possible, they can choose which to take.
I jumped the piece which had just jumped mine, and due to the defensive nature of the game so far the opponent was forced to move a piece into position for my piece to jump again and move into the far side of the board. When a piece reaches the edge of the opponent's side of the board it becomes "kinged" and from that point onward can move both forward and backward. Using my kinged piece allowed me more freedom of when to move my pieces, and I was able to force the opponent to move his pieces where they could be captured by mine. With only a few pieces lost I was able to capture most of the opponents pieces minus three which were together in the three leftmost squares of the third fourth and fifth rows. My opponent couldn't move, so I won the game. In checkers, you win the game whenever your opponent cannot make a move. Normally this happens by capturing all of their pieces, but it is possible to win by "blocking" their pieces as well.
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JThomson has been with GameLog for 10 years, 2 months, and 11 days |
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