Stars!-R-Us Article

The Interstellar-Traveler Hyper-Expander Peace-Monger.
By Omri Mann

For a long time the Hyper-Expander was though to be the superior race. While that may be true in general, when it comes to team play a totally different race dominates the arena. They are called the Interstellar-Traveler Hyper-Expander. While their incompetence at building and operating factories is their only shortcoming they sweep the universe like locust.

Consider this: a foursome of ITs, divide the habitability range between them so together they can colonize the whole universe. Having given up factories altogether and mining reduced to half each has a population growth of 19%. Still they are left with enough advantage points to add a few LRTs like improved star bases (essential for IT) and improved fuel efficiency. Now they divide between them the research fields relying on their ability to rapidly exchange technology through their stargates. Working with perfect coordination they are in fact like a single super-race with total habitability, high growth, and technological supremacy.

Yet their planets have a low yield of 1100 resource points at best (with no advanced remote mining). To over come this they have to colonize at least twice as much as any other player. This is easy as they use each others stargates to colonize virtually any plant within each others territory stretching a radios 100l.y. from their stargates. Thus they very quickly secure a large territory which no one can enter.

Now they become peace-mongers as they sit back and wait until they "out-resource" any opponent while decisively squashing any sign of aggression swiftly moving defense fleets to battle zones. Also, relying only on fast growing population they have no weak spot. Their production is evenly distributed through out their vast empire. Even if they lose a few colonies they recover almost instantly as they can fully rebuild a colony from scratch in as few as three turns having their sky rocketing production curve only slightly dented. Resistance is futile!

The strategy that follows the race design is this:

  1. Quickly scout your surrounding sharing the information with your team.
  2. Colonize everything using the stargates to colonize your partners. A colonizer can jump up to 1,200 l.y. through the 100/250 gates.
  3. Build stargates on stardocks as soon as possibly to create a grid of docking stations. A colony should be no further than 150 l.y. including your partners. This provides you with fast transportation as well as fueling stations.
  4. Evenly spread your population to maintain the population near the optimal 25% of capacity (growth is maximal at that point). Populate starting with the planets with the highest capacity.
  5. Continue this building more and more colonies and bases. The resources you save on factories and mines (you dont need as much since you dont need the Germanium) are available for research.
  6. If you need production centres fill up colonies to their maximum (1.1 million).
  7. Start assimilation on turn 40.

We have tried this with team games of pairs, threesomes, and foursomes and the result was always the same - the game lasts no more than 50 turns as the overwhelmed opponents simply surrender.

For example:
Game: "Ad Astera Per Aspera" (Latin:"To the Stars through Adversity").
Number of Players : 16 (4x4).
Start Positions: Distant.
Universe: Medium - Dense.
After 48 turns our team had a combined score of more than 5898 out scoring the next team by almost 200%.

The sustained annual average growth in resource was about 13% which all came from population. The whole universe had 540 planets which means that together we occupied 44% of all planets and we were just getting warm.

The score in 2448 was as follows:
Player #1Player #2Player #3Player #4Combined
Planets52665565238
Starbases36503834158
Unarmed419312197
Escort12144146
Capital5900
Tech. Lvls59707069
Resources23k28k26k24k
Score13051635151414445898
Rank4123

However things might look different if two such groups collide.
Remember - There can be only one!

If you think you can come up with a foursome that can beat this race design we challenge you to a game.

Credits:
Omri Mann (omri@cs.huji.ac.il) - chief architect
Tal Nevo (Tal@brm.com)
Gilad Raz (gold@brm.com)
Avi Wolfsthal (wolfie@brm.com)

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