MoO II races also don't like them either but not for espionage bonuses. In this game they have flat +20 to espionage and stealthy ships. How espionage works in MoO II is still the mystery, this old forum post explains some details but how odds are calculated is unexplained. I would assume it works similarly to the ground, combat which in turn uses the same formula as hit rolls in the space combat. So what does +20 to espionage means? Probably the same as +20 to the ground combat, 20% more chance to succeed and 20% less chance to get caught.
Stealthy ships is interesting trait that everybody avoids. It works the same as stealth field special equipment, ships are invisible on the galaxy map which makes it difficult for opponents to asses your defenses and impossible to see your attacking fleet. Unless they are omniscient, no kind of stealth can hide your ship on the main map from omniscients. One my argue that even non-omniscient AI could cheat and simply know were are your ships but I have confirmed they don't react to incoming cloaked ships. I have never actually used stealth field or stealthy ships trait and I've read somewhere that one or both of them is bugged so my experience with normal and phased cloaking device my not apply. Why people avoid this trait in custom races? It cost more then it is worth (4 picks vs omniscient which costs 3 picks), doesn't really help in combat (though my make combat easier), doesn't help economy and because of aforementioned bug.
I have played with espionage oriented custom race, it was fun and aggressive game. Almost as if playing with creative race but without the need for early game turtling. Now, I had no idea what to expect, except a lot of hate from other races. So let's begin.
After a little bit of scouting I've realized I'm in very poor neighborhood. There was no terrain or ocean planets, almost every planet was mineral poor or ultra poor and/or low gravity and Anraq, a monster guarded system, was very bad too. It was guarded by space eel and contained two planets: huge rich tundra with high gravity and medium ultra poor toxic with low gravity and gems. Tundra would be OK industry world if it had normal gravity and toxic planet was complete joke for guarded system. Gems give nice boost early on but there was simply no reason to build any building there. Fortunately I've found Vela system with huge rich high G tundra so I've settled there but sad fact was this and two more planets in home system were basically my whole empire for early and mid game.
To keep things more interesting other races introduced themselves fairly early. First ones were Elerian on 63rd turn. At first I was scared, I was weak and they could turn to annoying warmongers. On the other hand they had slow research because of government type and I was playing on a medium difficulty so they didn't have unfair bonuses. I thought for a while and traded research labs and automated factories with them. In ordinary circumstances I would withhold these two particular technologies but I figured if I was going to steal technologies I could give them a boost to get juicier ones sooner. That decision helped me to establish trade agreement so my situation was a bit less miserable. 10 turn later I've met Silicoids and 15 turns later, Humans.
Despite wet dreams of MoO fans, humans and Elerians didn't get along and unfortunately for me Elerians were on the losing end. My problem was that I was repeatedly losing contact with them, trade and research treaties would break and I'd lose desperately needed income source. To compensate and expand I've colonized a desert in Kochba system very near Elerian's homeworld. Things worked well for me for almost 100 turns, I've hired few quite pricey leaders with excellent bonuses, traded tritanium armor technology for missile bases and built some ships. Then out of the blue on turn 171 Elerians surrendered to Silicoids leaving me and Humans in a bad situation because it was only a matter of time when galaxy dividing Silicoids would decide to wage war on us.
But situation got even worse and weirder fast. Mere 6 turns later Antarans joined the party and attacked human colony making them even weaker for upcoming war. Couple of turns later giant space eel appeared to harass Silicoid's Ryoun system. It was good thing which turned bad for me but more about it later. In similar time frame I finally got enough technology to build a fleet for busting space eel at Anraq and secured gem deposits. Then Silicoids turned their ugly eye on me and declared war. My nuclear destroyers were good enough to keep them at bay so they gave up 10 turns later but again every good thing was counteracted by a bad thing and bad news. Bad news came in form of galactic council election where Silicoids alone held 8 votes of 16 total. Bad situation arised when giant space eel reproduced and sent it's equally giant offspring to my Kochba system.
I keep stressing it was a giant one because my fleet which easily destroyed normal one without loss was unable to carry enough nukes to kill this one and this one was definitely able to chase my ships down and one-shot them. Fortunately eel didn't want to destroy colonies so Kochba had lived under blockade. Around turn 220 situation improved, I've hired Tanus, a leader with good bonuses and advanced government technology and started to build bigger and more advanced ships. Humans were not so lucky, they were slowly losing to Silicoids so I decided to steal all of their technologies. It was not much but there were decent and made future stealing from Silicoids easier. To compensate I gave them technologies to defend themselves, zortium armor and missile base and accepted their plea for alliance. About the turn 250 I realized I could actually play as Darlok and help Humans by sabotaging Silicoids. Every few turns a building came down. If only I have started doing it sooner because humans became too few in numbers for upcoming election.
On turn 269 game again decided to make things more interesting by sending both Antarans and giant space hydra to me. Antaran fleet was tricky one, 4 frigates and 2 destroyers. I managed to deal with frigates but destroyers prevailed and Kochba was bombed down to 1 population unit. There were no problems with space hydra except it attacked Anraq making me pull remaining fleet far from Kochba and risk invasion there. That fateful election on turn 280 should have ended the game, Silicoids with their Elerian traitors had all the votes need to elect themselves because diminished Humans and my empire weren't big enough to make 1/3rd of total votes. When the game asked me whether I accept the ruling I chose "No" but for all intents and purposes it should count as if I have lost the game.
30 turns later I finally had what one could call a warship, a battleship with reinforced zortium, armed with antimatter torpedoes and supported with automated repair unit. About 60 turns latter I've conquered all Silicoid colonies. There were few sideshows like another Antaran attack and saving Nazin from going supernova but the game was straight forward, attack, invade, repeat.
So how was it being Darlok? Despite the game degenerating after one AI surrendered to another it was interesting but not because of my race choice. When playing other races I try to steal as much technologies as possible so Darlok espionage didn't feel fresh. Rate of tech stealing didn't seam to be significantly higher. Sabotage was somewhat better, there was an awesome moment where my spies have destroyed a star base on a planet I was about to attack on the same turn the attack happened. But most of the time saboteurs either did nothing or minimally harmed the opponent who didn't have any defensive spies and espionage technologies. It's hard to gauge the value of stealthy ships but I've noticed AI didn't attack undefended colonies when my overall fleet strength got big enough and it didn't concentrate defensive fleets when I was attacking him. Maybe it worked? All in all playing Darloks felt ordinary, as if they had no differentiating traits.
No comments:
Post a Comment