Super Warrior AAR -- First Strike FTW?

I decided to go with Super Warrior because I was really intrigued by the First Strike ability. On the one hand it looks far less utilitarian than something like Super Breeder or Super Hive, but the ability to completely explode an entire fleet of enemy warships before they can even zip up their flies just sounds excellent. So I'm going to go to town and try for a combat-oriented victory on a Gigantic map because apparently I am a masochist and I hate myself.

This AAR will likely be much more story and much less strategy talk on my end, since it's my first time playing with this particular super ability. I was very familiar with the intricate details of Super Diplomat when I started that AAR, but with this one I'm mostly just winging it and making up my own rules as I go along. I guess bear with me if I abruptly end up as a bloody smear on the asphalt of the universe six months into the game and post something like, "um OK Day Three I'm Dead LOL LOL".

The galaxy setup for this game is listed below. I finally managed to find my CD Key and just updated to DA v1.61 (or whatever the most recent version is), so if you give a crap here it is.

- Gigantic Galaxy
- Nine Random Opponents
- Painful Difficulty
- Common Everything
- Normal Tech Rate
- All Victory Conditions On
- Tech Trading On

This is my (hopefully) awesome civ. I figured that since I was going to be basically exterminating and/or subjugating all life in the galaxy it would only be fitting to embrace my inner Warhammer 40K aficionado and use a picture of my head Photoshopped onto the body of Ultramarines Chapter Master Marneus Calgar as my avatar:

I should mention before we go too much further that this is something like my fourth or fifth attempt at writing the Super Warrior AAR. The first couple of times I went balls-out war mongering, taking the War Party and using my civ points to max out Weapons, Hit Points, Repair, Soldiering, and any other skills that involved building ships that would make Imperial Star Destroyers look about as combat-effective as a GPS Satellite orbiting the Moon. Unfortunately, being able to shoot the mustache off a Klingon at four hundred yards doesn't really help you extract taxes from your citizenry, so as a result of my dumbass point choices I did an awesome job of bankrupting my civilization and throwing my entire race into an economic death spiral after about six turns. Since I was seemingly incapable of doing anything other than wasting money and making my citizens hate me, I did what any aspiring Galactic Emperor in my situation would have done: I consulted the GalCiv2 forums.

I read a great post somewhere about an effective way to set up a Super Warrior civilization, so I decided to give it a shot because obviously I'm too stupid to figure it out on my own. The poster (I can't remember who it was, but I'm guessing Wyndstar because that guy might know more about the inner intricacies of this game than Frogboy himself) essentially said that Super Warriors' effectiveness hinges on three attributes - Speed, Attack, and Luck. Speed and Attack are pretty self-explanatory, but apparently Luck not only affects your ability to find cool crap and get mad awesome 1337 bonus tiles, but it also works during combat to increase your minimum damage. Since we're going to be all about the damage here (we want to kill them before they can fire back), this will help us immensely. So as much as I was pumped up about throwing my support behind the War Party, it seems like the +25% Luck we get from the Universalists is going to be much more useful to us. Oh, and I also took the max Economics bonus because as I mentioned before I'm a complete gimp when it comes to managing my economy without relying on tech whoring as my primary source of income. Who knew I was such a ho?

Anyways, blah blah blah who cares about how much of a dumb jerk I am. This is the starting galaxy, and I am going to KICK IT'S ASS:

Ok, I'm mashed up in the top right and I appear to be going up against the Thalan, Torians, Drengin, Drath, Yor, Altarians, and three of the gray races that are all indistinguishable from each other on the galactic map. I'm going to guess Korx, Krynn, and Korath, but who knows.

I jump right in and start spamming out colonizers all over the place, looking to rush between the Thalan and Torian starting locations before they box me in. Since I took the +2 Speed ability I just chucked a colony module on a small-sized engine-less hull and started spraying them indiscriminately across my tiny boxed-in corner of the galaxy. Unfortunately, most of the systems near my homeworld are either completely devoid of habitable planets or they're home to nice fat juicy PQ5-7 planets that can serve little to no purpose in my empire except to sit there and be expensive. I guess I'll take whatever I can get, but it would be nice to have at least a PQ10 for my Manufacturing and/or Research Capital.

Since I was having a lot of trouble with this aspect of the game in my earlier attempts, I'll take a moment here to mention how I managed my economy early on (even though it was probably something like 75% luck and 25% actually knowing what the hell I'm doing). Basically, I just maxed production and dropped my tax rate until my overall approval was at 100%. I bought my first two factories on my homeworld, set my sliders to 1/49/50, and just watched my 5000bc surplus steadily decrease every single turn while keeping my approval up at 100%. I researched Sensors early and sent two additional Survey Ships on anomaly hunts, boldly searching for those life-saving 1000bc jackpots, while colonizing everything I came across and trying desperately to increase my tax base. Once I hit -498bc, I raised my taxes until I was at 51% approval, and dropped my production until I was actually making money for once (what a concept). If I found a good anomaly, I jacked my production up to 100% until the buffer went away. Eventually my citizenry started getting it on like porn stars, my population grew to a good size and I got some markets online so I was able to stabilize and get my industry running at 100% all the time. It was a little dicey there for about a month, but it all worked itself out in the end.

The bad news is that the colony rush didn't turn out so hot for me. Those Thalan bug bastards expanded towards me first, and while I managed to hold off the Torians I couldn't break through as far as I would have liked. The Thalan cut me off at the pass and boxed me into the corner, where I was stuck with my vast and diverse array of crappy worthless low-PQ colonies:

(I'm the hard-to-see dark blue in the bottom right corner)

The rush on hostile worlds comes along, everyone backfills, the economies stabilize, and everyone starts building up their empires. Unfortunately I'm nowhere near where I'd like to be in terms of economy, industry or technology. At this point in a Super Diplomat game I'd be establishing myself as a major galactic power, but unfortunately without the luxury of effective tech trading and diplomacy I'm starting to fall behind the curve like a remedial sixth-grader in an MIT post-graduate Engineering seminar:

Damn my unquenchable desire to smite all infidel aliens with a never-ending torrent of Photon Torpedoes! Now the Thalan, Krynn, Drengin, and Altarians are battling for the top and I'm just some chump also-ran. People are also starting to thug me for cash, which I hate. Did they not see that picture of me wearing a gigantor freaking suit of armor and sitting on a throne of skulls or whatever?! Throne of Skulls = I'm Not Giving You Any Money.

Meanwhile, the Drath are paying people off to fight me because apparently they aren't down with my tendency to pick the "Evil" option when I colonize a new planet, even though all the Good options are stupid and self-destructive. Before I even know what's even going on the freaking Altarians have declared war on me, despite the notable fact that they're located something like twenty parsecs away from me and none of their ships even have engines on them. I'm not worried about it because they're on the other side of the galaxy, but after looking at the lead the Altarians got on this map I was considering going Good and pulling a combined Torian-Drath-Altarian-Imperium Diplomatic-Conquest Victory. The moment Eleys Mue called me up to declare war on me however was the exact moment I decided it was time to bust out the dark helmet and get it on Vader-style. Sorry, Eleys. I don't care that you might be hot for a computer babe, but I'm going to have to crush your pitiful military under my heel and bend your pathetic civilization and all of it's people to my iron will. That's just the way it goes some times. I'll save you a place in my harem if you're interested.

All in due time, however. Right now I don't even have the Range to get out to Altaria Prime, assuming I had the firepower I would need to blast Wisp out of orbit and send it crashing into Altaria. My new decision to turn to the Dark Side did present me with an interesting option in terms of improving my economic situation however, and I was looking forward to pursuing this potentially-lucrative route:

As luck would have it, I just so happened to be positioned next to two Minor Civs (as of the above screenshot I'd already captured the Jessuins' PQ15 homeworld) and an incredibly weak major civ. I started mass-producing some 0/9/0 attack small-hulled fighters, fleeted them together into a sea of 0/45/0 killing machines and proceeded to First Strike the ever-loving bejeezus out of the inept half-asleep Torian pilots. The beauty of the Super Warrior is that you don't have to waste valuable shipboard real estate one stupid crap like "Life Support", "Defenses" or "Ejection Seats" - it's all weapons all the time here, baby. If it doesn't fire some sort of projectile capable of killing another living creature or turning heavily-fortified starship hulls into deli-fresh Swiss cheese, there's no point in putting it on the ship.

After their entire Torian Navy was summarily crushed in the span of about two months by a never-ending horde of Imperial SA-25 "Witch Hunter" Starfighters, my Tir-Quan trained martial arts kung fu ninja cyborg commando soldiers parachuted in from orbit and managed to wipe out armies ten times the size of their own. Attack Group Alpha snagged a couple of very nice PQ10+ planets the Torians had colonized inside my territory before snatching a PQ15 colony out of the Carinoids' cold dead hands, while Attack Group Beta took Toria and Toria IV in a matter of weeks. The only front on which I didn't make a whole lot of rapid progress was with Attack Group Gamma, and then really only because "Attack Group Gamma" was actually like a single SA-25 Witch Hunter flying all over the place trying to take out all of their crappy 2/0/0 Defenders. It might as well have been called "Imperial Attack Group Lieutenant Mark Johnson" or something.

Just as sweet delicious munchy-crunchy victory was about to be mine, however, I made an interesting discovery:

Apparently I'm at war with the Krynn or something, because all of a sudden they just completely freaking came out of nowhere with a gigantic armada of ships and started laying waste to my colonies. My first contact with the second-largest military in the Galaxy came when they sent a huge fleet of ships to blow up the single 1/0/0 Defender I had stationed at the planet on the top left of this screenshot and then followed it up with 4-5 transports packed pull of bloodthirsty Krynn warriors who decided they were going to spend their evenings slaughtering my citizenry and being dicks to everyone. This was quickly followed up by wave after wave of Krynn Fighters and Escorts swooping in from some random location off to the right of the map. I mean, I can't emphasize enough that there were a LOT of them, and they were flippin' EVERYWHERE.

This was really my first opportunity to put Super Warrior to the test, and let me tell you right now that I am a believer. I must have gone up against the full might of the massive Krynn military (I would estimate probably between thirty and forty separate fleets perhaps) with only something like six fleets and managed to make a Strategic Combat Simulator look like a well-played game of Gradius or Ikaruga or something. I didn't lose a single engagement, and the only time I lost a ship was when one of my fleets went up against a random Krynn Battleship (!!) that came in out of nowhere... I took him out, but lost one of my ships in the process. One small hull for one large hull is a trade-off I'm willing to make though.

The main advantage to Super Warrior doesn't appear to be the ability to crush a large fleet with an inferior force, but rather that you can take one powerful fleet and use it to repeatedly kick the asses of many smaller, crappier fleets without having to worry about being beaten down by attrition. Think of it this way - at one point I had a 0/45/0 fleet consisting of five 0/9/0 small-hull (8hp) ships and was face-to-face with a wall of four separate 16/0/0 fleets with four 4/0/0 small-hull ships in each (they may have been Tiny, I don't remember). With Super Warrior, I was able to destroy all four fleets in a single turn without so much as even losing a hit point, whereas without the ability I might have lost one or two ships during the course of the turn and reduced my fleet's combat effectiveness by 20-40%. Not bad at all, especially considering that I didn't see this surprise attack coming and reinforcements weren't going to be able to get to the front for several weeks.

Despite this distraction I manage to completely conquer the Torians and the Carinoids before turning the full weight of the Imperial Navy on the Krynn invaders. I'm basically kicking their asses up and down the galaxy, but they just keep on coming. It's maddening. Unfortunately, just when I realize that I'm going to have to suck it up and launch a major offensive into their territory the Thalan and Altarians hold a secret meeting, decide they're going to jump in on the "let's force Ben to blow up all of our ships" bandwagon and expand the war. That's fine with me, chumps. You bring the asses and I'll supply the kicking.

So here's the situation at the moment in the galaxy. I've increased my economy, research and manufacturing substantially, but am still third in the galaxy in terms of population and colonies controlled. It's time to start whomping asses, trashing enemy ships and establishing myself as an intergalactic badass by torching everything in sight with the Holy Fire of ship-to-ship missile weapons.

I'd like to think that I'm hitting a turning point in the game. I've fully embraced the true power of the Dark Side - the MCC and Artificial Slave Center are both online to help further increase my economy and manufacturing potential, and my first Medium-Hulled Psyonic Missile Frigates are just beginning to roll off the assembly line. They outclass anything I've seen in the galaxy at this point, and I have the Logistics to fleet them up into unstoppable First Strike machines. I'm also working up to Psyonic Beam just in case the Krynn or the Thalan decide they're going to try and counter me, and from there I'm going to go for Hyperwarp III, Expert Miniaturization and probably the Black Hole Eruptor, in that order.

My plan of attack is now to get off the defensive and start pushing the attack. The new Valkyrie-Class Frigates have engines on them so they'll be much more adept at striking deep into enemy territory, and their weaponry is still badass enough to vaporize anything this side of the Death Star. Here's my current strategy:

We'll have to see what happens. I have to admit that this is a very different style of play for me, and it really involves a lot more micromanagement and ship-level strategy than I'm used to. I'm having a blast right now even though the game is a little more slow-moving than I'm used to, but after seeing a couple of those Krynn Battleships I really worry that I might run into something I can't handle. I may find myself really having to put the Super Warrior ability to the test, especially once the Thalan and the Altarians get their forces mobilized and go on the defensive. However, if my boys can pull out some key victories, I stand to be able to conquer sizable chunks of the three largest and most populous civilizations in the galaxy.

I'll update this post in a few days, after I've made some progress in the war. In the mean time, I'm open to strategy suggestions if you've got 'em.