Well as I mentioned yesterday evening, it's all over and I came out victorious! Here's the proof:
As you can see, by the end, I had infected all over the map! Red was nestled within my borders, snuggling in close to my warmest parts. I'm surprised that we stayed "friends" the entire game to be honest. I suppose it worked out well for both of us. Second is quite the achievement when you start in a crappy location like he did at the beginning. If he could've taken out one of his neighbors (with minimal borders) right away, he might've been in a bit more of a promising position. As it was, he secured his borders as best as he could and let me take the lead. That worked out really nicely for me as I always had someone backing me up on my campaigns. I made sure to move a bit quicker than red, and so it always kept me ahead of him.
So to summarize my enemies:
First there was dark red to my south east. He was my absolute natural target. He had few borders and if I hadn't have attacked him, he would've gone straight for me or red. Taking his land gave me one less border and a foothold from which I could build up my fleets away from prying eyes. It was a bit of a shame that he turned AI right in the middle of our attack.
My second target was Yellow. Red and I had just been working together against dark red so he was my current best ally. Yellow didn't seem to be doing much when everyone else around the galaxy was in skirmishes, he was content to build up his forces. By the time my fleets were in position (behind my borders where yellow couldn't see), we had already taken out one player completely. He seemed shocked when I attacked him (v. funny) and between red and I, we blitzed through his stars.
After that, I picked up a few dark blue stars, red took out the remaining dark red stars and I built up my forces. It was at this stage when Pink made a mad rush northward, boosting up his industry and science and looking like a real threat. By this stage of the game, there were only really 4 of us left; Green, Red, Pink and myself. I knew that without some smooth diplomacy, the game would be over before we knew it.
So the attack on Pink was a go. He had done superbly well but hadn't thought about diplomacy in this late stage of the game. He should've seen that he was the biggest threat and without at least one buddy, all it took was one resourceful diplomat to bring the galaxy together against him. Well that's what happened and after building up my ships for a weekend, we all moved against him in one go.
One of my favourite mails of the game came from pink.
It made perfect sense. I was in second place, he was a long way in the lead. If we hadn't banded together like we did, I might've only achieved second place (or less). That would've been OK with so many playing but I knew that with a bit of diplomacy, I had as much of a chance of anyone.
He fought really hard at the beginning of the campaign. I felt very demotivated at one point. I think what turned it around was that I had a constant stream of large numbers of ships being reinforced through the easterly most stars of my territory and at this stage, I was deep in the heart of Pink territory - attacking his most important stars. That, coupled with red and green striking, were huge blows to his reinforcing capabilities. He even tried to consolidate his ships at 3 key locations but by that stage, my own reinforcements were too much for him and I was able to take 2 of them pretty easily.
After Pink was taken care of, I was way out in the lead and it was just the three of us. This was probably the hardest part of the game for me in terms of deception. When you're fighting for 1st place, that's one thing. When you have 2 people both content with second place and trusting in you to help them secure it, it's another to break that trust to win it for yourself and give second place to another (which is what I ultimately did). Sorry Green if you're reading.
I mostly really enjoyed this game. It was much more fraught with danger and was heavily dependent on who your alliances were with than my first game. At the beginning of the game, I had no expectation of winning whatsoever. To win out of 10 active players (who I know all read the RPS blog) was a great achievement. I told them all (via the chat screen) that I was taking notes on the game and had a response half way through the game that "it was a good that I was still in it, otherwise my writeup would'vebeen a bit crap". As it turned out, I had plenty to write about!
I don't think I'll be playing another game of Neptune's Pride. I've played 2 and won 2 right now and I'm completely spent. I'm sick of being completely addicted to it and having to check my stars when I get up and when I go to bed. My wife will thank me for not playing anymore too!
I really liked the Solium Infernum writeup that RPS did which is turn based rather than being dependent on logging on all day. It would require me to put some money down in order to play but I'm thinking about it. I'll probably blog about that too if/when I start my first game. I'm trying to convince Myk (from the comments) to pick it up too so that might be fun to play with someone I know (or completely wreck our friendship)!
Keep your eyes peeled for a link in this blog to a new SI blog if I do decide to play. Although, if I am playing with Myk, I probably shouldn't blog where he can read about it!
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