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Finally had the group over again for one last game day this Sunday. With four of us, we went for Space Empires 4X, which we’re playing just often enough to mostly remember how it works, but not enough to really speed things up.

I’ve gotten the idea that other groups tend to go out there and start beating each other up while we’re still trying to get our economies developed, so I did an early raid into Dave’s area, and shot up a new colony and some support infrastructure.

After that, things didn’t go well for me. I had three planets adjacent to my homeworld, but most of the others were at the far end of the ‘safe’ area, including three clustered in the corner near Mark. Mark saw the activity in that area, didn’t like the implications, and started raiding the area just as the colonies were getting going. I was never able actually protect anything in the area, helped by some blindness on my part. I insisted on trying to build out a navy to sweep him out, when building bases and/or shipyards would have been at least as good as a response (since they could be built on site, instead of having to move into position). I thought of that, like many things during the game, right after the build phase was completed.

Overall there weren’t any great divergences in economy, even the with delays Dave had setting up his last couple of colonies, his income tracks just a couple points behind everyone else’s. Jason managed to grab several 10 Mineral markers, and had a fairly massive boost from those (there were several in the area between him and Dave, and he got all but two). Meanwhile, I had refused to build any extra miners, and was still trying to sweep up the 5 Mineral markers in my own space (there were no 10s found near me, and I had problems remembering to find the miner and move him after about the second economic round).

Exploration in general was slow, with the heavy terrain rule generating even more havoc than normal. One hex generated about five Danger! markers, and another three generated about three each. Jason’s scout corps was wiped out by one of those (and other dangerous spots), while the ‘five’ and the two others were all on my borders, and ate a lot of my scouts (I ended up exploring with a DD a couple times, but got lucky with them). At the end of the day, there were still notable unexplored pockets left, including a diagonal string of four hexes across the center of the board. There was a functioning wormhole (range: three hexes), and another with the second end waiting to be discovered (from Jason to my central border; range: about 8 hexes). Towards the end of the day, barren planets started showing up: mostly on the edge of ‘my’ space, but I couldn’t get at them (despite trying) because of the ongoing crisis, and Dave also moved against my colonizing efforts

I tried more of a ‘DD spam’ shipbuilding strategy this game, but generally lost out in combat against Mark, as his CAs and tactics-enhanced DDs shot up most of my fleet before they could fire. By the end, I was building a mix of DDs and BCs, and while the latter were doing better, I was still losing too much in any combat. Mark was still at CAs at the end, while Dave was also up to BCs, and Jason had gotten up to BBs (but his navy never really saw any combat, and it looks like he built a single one on the last turn). Looking at the maintenance logs, Dave had built up a fairly sizable navy (again), Jason only started building up late, while Mark had lost most of his against me, and mine stayed in the 7-9 maintenance range once I started seriously building ships because I was losing ships as fast as I could build them (and usually losing the most modern ones).

Overall, the day was fairly frustrating for me. If I’m going to attack something early, I should keep the pressure up. But that’s just going too much against type: I want to build the best colonization system I can. I’m still surprised by just how much of a threat Mark saw my colonizing a group of planets near him as being (they were within my ‘home’ area, and I can’t control where they are). Certainly, not letting me get the ‘outsystem’ planets at the end just makes too much sense: that’s what I want, and how I often have a very robust economy.

Even more so than normal, there’s no clear sense of who might end up on top. It certainly wasn’t going to be me. Assuming Mark kept the pressure up, and Dave did more than just shoot up the most far-flung colonies, I would probably collapse. Jason, might end up the real winner there, but it’s hard to say.

Got the gang together again (finally) for some gaming yesterday. There was four of us (me, Dave, Mark and Jason), so we went with another round of Space Empires 4X. I managed to talk everyone into adding in the merchant pipeline (trade route) rules this time, and we kept all the options from last time (fleet markers, heavy terrain, and gates).

Initially, I (blue) got off to a very slow start, as the only world adjacent to mine was the one barren world in the home exploration zone, and it took me a while to find most of my colonizable planets. However, I was starting to find minerals, and the closest world was only two hexes away, so I built a second miner and three merchant pipelines to link the colony with the home system. As it turned out, most of the planets were in a chain from that one leading along the edge of my zone. This made extending the pipeline fairly easy, and sped up the colonization process, as everything just went down the pipeline at double-speed to the frontier. I ended up rolling money forward many times because my shipyard capacity was tied up on cheap MS Pipeline builds.

Meanwhile, Mark (green) and Dave (red) made contact in the deep space area between them, and Mark attacked, chasing Dave’s scouts off. However, Dave managed to bring in an alien wreck, which gave him a size class bonus, and he chased Mark back out with new DDs. There was buildup after that but nothing much other than that. Mark then got into a fight with Jason (yellow), and managed, with quite a bit of effort to eliminate two of his colonies (helped by some poor die rolling from Jason in the first big fight).

I ended up interfering, and taking on Mark, with help of a gate that led pretty neatly from my area to his. The problem was that the next place to go from there was an asteroid field, which caused long-dragged out fights as I was hitting on ‘2’s, and Mark on ‘1’s—when we remembered. Just remembering all the modifiers normally is enough of a challenge. To a certain extent, it probably would have been better to help dismantle Jason, and try to get more out of it than Mark. But that was impossible. Jason’s systems were all concentrated in the area away from me.

Also, Dave did a better job getting at mid-board systems than I had realized. I was too worried about the Markian menace to want to tangle with anything else.

Sadly, it had to be a short day. We had to call it for time just shy of the 12th economic phase. The early game had gone remarkably fast, but the later stages slowed down, in part due to extended combats. Dave ended the day with the biggest economy at 102 for the upcoming economic phase, and was paying 26 in maintenance fees. All he had was ship size (up to BCs) and Terraforming. I was up to 84 (with one colony still growing) with 15 in maintenance. I had been isolated for a while, and didn’t start building a navy til late. I had just gotten up to BCs in the previous econ phase, and had +2/+2 tech, and Tactics 1 (from an alien wreck), and Ship Yards 3 (double capacity), and of course, Terraforming. I was probably going to build BCs for a while, but was contemplating throwing more DDs at my problems as well. Mark was earning 63 and Jason 55. I’m not so sure of their techs, but Jason was up to BCs, while I think Mark was still on CAs. Mark had +1/+1 tech, and hadn’t upgraded that since very early on, preferring to mass-produce CAs. Jason had been at +2/+0 for most of the game, but had eventually gotten +1 defense, and had taken Exploration before the war with Mark started.

One of the side effects of the merchant pipelines was to discourage spending on movement technology, since everything was going fast within the borders, and it wasn’t far to anything past that. Here’s the board at the end of the day, with what I know of the pipelines marked:

No, I don’t think Jason ever built any.

Had the gang over yesterday for a second go a Space Empires 4X. Jason couldn’t make it, so it was me, Mark, Dave and Patch. The latter two hadn’t played before, so there was some explanations, rules reading, and tiny bits of advice to share from me and Mark.

The four-player game is notably different from the three-player version, because of the reduction in deep space encounters, which leads to a reduction in exploration losses. The game went pretty fast; there wasn’t lots of action, and no truly large fleet actions, but everyone was fairly well developed and trying to feel their way to expand without overreaching.

Dave concentrated on building a large fleet and turtleing early (he figured that was safest while he learned the game), which looked very impressive, and certainly kept me from wanting to mess with him, but it ended up technologically outmoded, and chewing up much of his economy in maintenance. It probably would not have been hard to take him apart, once this was realized.

Mark got adventurous first, and paid the price with constant border squabbles with me and Patch for the rest of the game. This kept him confined to his original ‘safe’ area, and he had troubles keeping that developed.

I ended up pursuing my quality fleet path again, mass producing DDs with Attack and Defense +1 (one of those I got from a Space Wreck), and not having much of a navy until that point. I managed to make do with those until I could get +2/+2 CAs out the door, which served me fairly well, though of course I never had enough. I ended up being the only one to get Movement 2, which helped more than I had thought. I managed to get most of my systems colonized early (and took terraforming early, because my home area barren world was adjacent to my homeworld), and got a couple barrens on my borders colonized and going fairly early. This lead to me having an economic advantage until the end, when Mark got one of my systems and Patch got two others just before we broke up for the day.

Patch had a decent start, but was the main victim of Mark’s first raiding foray. He recovered from that, and actually had quietly colonized three worlds in the center by the end. I only came to that realization late, and did not have anything within one turn’s travel of his worlds (five hexes…). So he ended with the strongest economy as of the ninth economic turn.

Patch had gotten out one BC at the end (used against Dave), while I had built three to try and stop the raiding on my Mark-side border. They caught both Mark and Patch’s forces, and all promptly died to a string of ‘1’s and ‘2’s. (There’s something wrong with our bloody ships today!)

Anyway, everyone enjoyed the game, and had a good time with it. There were some comments on the difficulty of keeping all the hidden information straight, which is a definite problem, but it seems the game is fun enough that everyone is willing to put up with it as the price of entry.