SGP

You can create a game, leave it, and rejoin it with a new alias. And yeah, e-mail them and they'll sort things out for ya.

I am so excited. I was scrounging for a name for a while, and then it hit me and I knew it was the one. I'm so razzed!

Yup yup, let Yellow->Cyan, Red->Purple, and You->Orange. It should be easy convincing Yellow of the tactical advantage of having Cyan's territories. Red I'm not so sure though.

I'd love to play default settings in a spiral galaxy. I'm wherever on names, and will go with the flow. Please no uninvolved players

PANDEMIC!

You can join a trial game for free. These don't do private games with engaged players any justice, but you'll get a good feel for the game. Anyone who's on the fence should at least have a taste of the free games. The worst thing a player in the private game could do is lose interest and stop playing within the first week, so let's try to avoid that Also, if we really do have enough interest, I could create a game this time instead of waiting till August.

BONNIE WHY!!!

Ahh, haven't listened to the podcast yet but I'd be up for playing again. We definitely would need more commitment from all players. Idlers *guffaw* ruin the game. I could see us playing one of the spiral galaxies to add a twist on things

Count me out. I'd like to learn to play Dwarf Fortress but not with someone else's colony. I would ruin it and make it a goblin brothel or something by mistake.

Ah Dibs, if I had made an alliance with you and sat on your stars to help fend them off, I think it would've paid off in the long run. It would've been nice to have another ally in the south Unfortunately, I was preoccupied with grabbing stars in the east. My apologies~

Yeah I understand, and honestly you clearly made the right choice. I would caution Murdoc though, the policy of expand-expand-expand probably won't work if you're in a galaxy of people that have their stuff together and decide to jump you. I think the real winner is the one who can grow but stay off the radar, which usually means being right in the middle of things. Persuasive words count for more than anything in early-mid game. If someone becomes a total giant in late-game, they really can't do much, but if people respond quickly, they can prevent that from happening.

Hahaha oh well. I wanted to stay good with Remo because Jennoa and Ens allied up early on and I needed a nearby neighbor. I was fine sitting on my stars because I had a resource lead on everyone and would have sat there until the end of time. Eventually, Murdoc sent me a hurried message saying Jennoa was about to invade him. Naturally, I looked at the stats pages and at Murdoc's territories and nothing had been taken. I told him to let me know when Jennoa was actually committed to an assault and that I would back him up then. His reply: things have changed, I should have taken his offer (and I still am confused about this offer business) and he wished me good luck. I sat again, and saw ships starting to amass near me by Jennoa, Ens, and Murdoc. I was able to grandstand with a huge amount of ships and Ens and Murdoc seemed to be losing interest in the pursuit, so once they started scuttling ships back, I figured why the heck not and attacked Jennoa's massive fleet. I felt I had it in my rights since he organized a coalition against me, but Murdoc and Ens disagreed. I had a lot of fun this game defending. I think that's one of the few things I do well, but the numbers eventually caught up to me. I do recommend Jennoa and Ens re-read the tutorial and make use of the battle calculator [http://www.josteinb.com/npCalc/]. Defenders get first strike, with ws+1, so much of my defense was letting 1 ship take out x+1 of theirs. In future games, you all might want to focus on key stars, instead of every little star. An important strategy in my infrastructure was to invest industry in only high resource stars. That way I could gather my fleets much faster. This works for an offensive player, but once I was being completely invaded, I shifted over to buying as much industry as cheaply as possible. That method makes you a harder bubble to pop. At that point, I didn't care about gathering fleets, I cared about planting myself on the stars for as long as possible. I do wish that Remo had galloped in to my rescue earlier. He was content with quietly growing and expanding, and although we had been trading tech for a while, I kept trying to point the CRW alliance his direction (even calling them dimwits at one point for not listening to me, which I'm sorry for doing.) All in all, I am happy I held up as well as I did. Murdoc, I would have been more open to negotiation but my experiences with you led me to see you as being mercurial in your ways. I couldn't turn around and suddenly trust you after you jumped on me for doing nothing to you earlier. Anyways, I'm up for another game whenever and if you all would have me. I'd really like to play in a game *without* leavers for once, and I have a clever roleplaying crutch that I think you all would find entertaining.

Yeah I don't care about sharing reasons for what/why/how I did things. I am disappointed that no one other than Shmeptune actually gave Remo grief. Maybe it's e-celebrity syndrome. I had good reasons not to, but the Cyan/Red/White Alliance should have shifted focus much much earlier than they did (or did they ever really shift focus ). Also, in every game I've played, missing players imbalances things greatly. I was able to steamroll Wurtsi and then gobble up the Magraviate with Remo very early. That's why I had such ridiculous infrastructure stats.

Thanks for that post Miffy. I probably will never play this game but it was enjoying to read. Hope you feel better.

Forgive me if this has been posted but I thought these glitch videos would be perfect for podblast discussion: http://www.kotowari.org/what-is-your-favorite-red-dead-redemption-glitch/ It's fun to see the programming behind things with ragdoll limbs functioning with unintended models.

For the most part this is a tame game. It's strange because I went into it and still am playing with a competitive slant but that really doesn't seem like the case with the rest of the galaxy in general. Very odd to me...

Just started a game with my friends who live in town. Ran with default settings, 12 players, and alliances. You can see what extra stars and 1ly homeworlds does to the map: Wizards is so tiny!

You guys are going to play the 12-player spiral galaxy next, I just know it!

I was reading that AAR you linked to and didn't find the recounting interesting until one person took over: http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/chapter1-11.html It's hilarious

I love this game SO MUCH! Another gamer recommended this music to play Neptune to: OIUxwEJ-GXI

Chris, it's all about min/maxing things. For instance, with the first production cycle especially, wait to spend money on economy till the very very end, since you might have more stars with cheaper upgrades. Along those lines, always get speed first to grab stars faster. Then with industry do one level of it on every star for its defense and concentrate the rest of your industry on key stars. With science, whatever is cheap and defensible. Then, taking planets gives you a nice boost. I think I was the only player this game to wait to upgrade economy till the end of cycles. It shows, and I've since backed off on investments so I don't get too massive.

I think having not idea what's going on on the other side is great. I'll still be meeting players as the game goes on. This galaxy has a false sense of size though. We started with double the money and have resource rich planets so we're growing much faster than natural. At default settings, 12 players would work great I bet.

So I guess he's abandoned the Wizard's Traverse game to focus on the Puffin one?

By the way, the best way to reach me is through my e-mail at Sixart@Gmail.com or through G-Chat which is all the better Just put something about Neptune so I know it's you guys.

When browsing Stars, right above the Fleet Strength there are 3 "Find Cheapest" buttons. You can click them, or use E-I-S to pull it up.