The Advent regroup.

Posted on July 15, 2008

So, after my first defeat to Manueel, I played several games against the computer with the insight I’ve gained.  The first thing I’ve noticed is that I’m resolving the games much faster.  I was resolving single player games in about an hour, now I’m doing it between thirty and forty minutes.  It doesn’t mean much to me except the fact that my execution is getting faster, and that my strategy is becoming a little more coherent.

 

My basic "build order" looks like this.

Create three scouts

Sell 200 units of minerals

Buy 200 units of crystals

build capital construction site

build extractors

build temple of hostility.

build a few disciples and raid my belt when my captial ship becomes available.  I’m using the Progenitor so I can get my first colony up faster.

 

From here, I’m basically building a force of illums and disciples.  I tech straight up to the illums, then build the rest of my disciples afterwards so that I have more bodies in the early mid game. 

In the maps I’m playing on, it doesn’t take more than 3-4 hops to get to the enemy base, so after chasing the enemy around for a while, I go for the jugular and wrap things up.

So far it’s working well, but I plan to get online some more and test it out against live opponents very soon.

The First Game.

Posted on July 15, 2008

Went online with Sins on Sunday.  I was expecting to have a good time and got that and whole lot more.

The initial happenings were bumpy –had to set port forwarding so that I could actually host a game, but fortunately I work with computers for a living so that was trivial.  Five minutes later I’ve managed to get my first game going.  I decide to go with Advent, who I’ve been practicing with in solo mode for a few games.  My opponent, Manueel, chooses the same.  The mirror match right off the bat! 

I’ve chosen Close Encounters, a small nine planet map that comes with the game.  I already know the map from 1P, so I’m comfortable with where everything is, and little else.

 

I start by swap 200 units of minerals for crystal, and build my scouts and my Capital ship building right off the bat.  I’ve heard that Illuminators are awesome in numbers, so I decide that’s what I’ll try.  I scout out Manueel’s base and see that he is going with a similar build.  What’s different is that be builds the Radiance capital ship and builds a colonizer to roam about independently.  Looking back, this colonizer won him the game.

I keep my focus on getting my first expansion and building up my illuminator stock.  In short order I have about a half dozen.  I harass his battleship that is fighting neutrals near my un-colonizable asteroid field, chasing it off after inflicting solid damage.  I farm the neutrals he left behind for experience while building my illuminators, and begin to push towards his base.  Expecting some resistance, I create some defense vessels to accompany my wrecking crew.

Once I’m at his homeworld, Malice + illuminators + Defense Vehicles  wreck his disciples (though I note he has two frigate builders), smash his capital ship, and delay his hangar’s offense.  As I’m pushing into the base, gets busy building even more hangars and disciples.  Before I know it, I’m crowded out of a battle that I was winning.   He wisely targets my defense vessels, and I realize that I didn’t bring enough with me as they explode within the vacuum of space.

I retreat my raiding fleet to the asteroid belt outside of his homeworld, catch my breath, and ponder my next move.  He has claimed a whole mess of extractors all over the map, but in the heat of battle it hasn’t occurred to me that, with my initial offense thwarting, he is now winning the econ race.  I didn’t just not win; I was routed in the context of this fact. I mean, not only does having more minerals and crystals mean having enough of those specific resources, it means having more cash, as he can trade those in when he needs.  My rush was solid, but I needed to target his infrastructure more.  The next rush I do I will make builder ships a priority target and then worry about fighting ships.

 

During the game though, I don’t notice any of this.  Still oblivious to the fact that everything is hopeless unless I fight for the expansions, my next bright idea is to build guardians.

Guardians are cool.  Repulsion is a great ability, both in flavor and game affect, and can be a battle winner all by itself. 

This game though, I didn’t bring enough, and I didn’t have enough fleet support to make repulsion truly dangerous.  I could repulse and isolate sections of Manueel’s fleet, but I wasn’t bringing enough DPS to kill or seriously damage the unsupported fleet before the rest of the fleet’s return.

 

Scouting around, I see that Manueel has expanded out, and taken one of the arctic planets in the system.  It is now dawning on me that I’m seriously screwed, but I decide to fight it out anyway.  He has me on the run, and my splinter fleet is rushing through phase lane after phase lane, arriving back home with a handful of ships.  More ships await me at home.

Manueel stops pursuit just outside my homeworld.  There’s really not much reason to do otherwise, as I’ve learned:  My homeworld could be littered with defenses and he would just waste resources fighting before he’s ready to bomb the planet in short order.  I’ll need some more experience to determine whether this plays out, but my initial assessment is this:  Containment is better than attacking in the mid-late game.  In the early game harassment works, and is almost a necessity.  But in the mid-late game, attacking a homeworld gives you little more than a black eye.  If one has taken the map, why waste resources?  Let the opponent bunker up and try to build an offense, since you’ll build faster.

Again –only hindsight is making any of this clear to me.  I rushed to make a dozen disciples and leapt out of my base.  A grip of disciples and illuminators were eager to engage.  My guardians were picked out of the line and shot before they could retreat.  With them gone, so went my hopes for victory.  My capital ships shields collapsed, and I surrendered to Manueel’s superior generalship and economy.

I can’t wait to get into another game.  Sins of a Solar Empire multiplayer is addictive in the extreme.

The Lay of the Land.

Posted on July 14, 2008

When I decide I want to get into a game,  I spend a lot of time surfing forums and the internet.  I’m looking for what the game looks like at an "advanced" or higher level of play.  In this research phase, I have a chance to not only learn what I need to learn, but I get a chance to re-assess whether I want to get myself involved or not. 

Making a game that endures the rigors of high-level, "tournament-quality" play is difficult.  Most games can’t stand up to the stress of their player base seeking to not only play the game, but to break it.  When you find descriptions of a game that’s broken for high-level play, you see a game with a severe lack of options.  A healthy game has a diverse set of strategies and paths to victory that a player can use. 

Good games get better as you spend more time with them and bad games get worse.  This is at the heart of things.

So, I’ve been spending time looking into what drives Sins of a Solar Empire as a compettive game.  There’s not much of a tourney-scene for the game, unfortunately.  What exists are small cadres of players who game within their groups, some of whom are quite skilled.  On the official SoSE site, there exists a split between long-game 1P gamers, and more competitive on-line gamers. I think nothing is wrong with either style of play, but what I’m most interested in is gaming psychology ; having a mind controlling the other side is much more fascinating to me.

To that end people have been posting some great resources with knowledge on the game.  My favorite is this post by Ke5trel, "Viable Strategy, Counters, Replays, and Tips 1.05".  It’s a great "State of the Game" article.  The next version (1.1) is due soon, but I still appreciate Ke5trel’s article because it informs me as to what the game is going to be changeing from.  It’s a launching point, and I’m now just trying out some games versus the AI working out the strategies detailed.  Only Advent though.  I decided I liked playing crazed psionicists, so they are my race of choice.

What I still can’t find are replays.  I’ve downloaded a few but they break my game as they are for older versions and are incompatible with 1.05.  Having replays for an RTS tells you all the information you need to know.  Is the game fun when you play to win?  What type of actions do you take to win?  What are the strategies and how are they implemented?  Finding videos of 1v1 play is going to be my next mission.

Welcome to Illuminator

Posted on July 6, 2008

Hi,  welcome to Illuminator!  In this blog I’ll be covering Stardock/Ironclad’s great 4x/RTS game, Sins of a Solar Empire.  I’ve reviewed the game in the main Omnivangelist blog, and I’ll go into a lot of detail about the game here.

As a longtime RTS player, what I’m most interested in is the multiplayer game.  Expect to see some replays (both mine and others I can find), in addition to my analysis and thoughts as I attempt to get better at the game.  I’ll share any cool resources I find, and hope to get player and developer reviews here for your perusal.

Enjoy!

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