Part 60: Gnolam Grind

Gnolam Grind

Priorities, in order, were continuing infrastructure development, getting more Deathbringer battleships out as quickly as possible, and research. We have a stupid amount of food, a healthy treasury, and a secure military situation so long as the Bulrathi behave. A waiting game for the fleet to be replenished so we could go smash things, and the sooner the better.




Maybe sometime we'll even keep this planet. Also, we're cramming Meklar anywhere there's room, esp. on the Gnolam-occupied worlds since I don't want them breeding anymore than is necessary.




The good Commodore is quite the multi-talented fella.




SD 3525.7 - Some more attrition happened but eventually we collected 10 Battleships at once, having maxed out what the economy can support. The scale has tipped to overwhelming force, including a new version that was able to make room, with miniaturization advancements, for an extra weapon mount (11 Plasma Cannons instead of 10). Tech is still even here in the ground combat, but the Gnolams themselves stink so we took only two battalions of losses.

At this point there's no reason not to expect that we'll be able to flatten them with minimal losses. They were only able to muster a single battleship and cruiser each in opposition along with their typical static defenses. There are only transports, no warships, of the Gnolam resistance on scanners.




After another step up in Physics, we'll be able to be even more efficient in our Deathbringer designs. Now I want to boost our research, then production more. It's time for economic overkill, as much of it as is necessary to bring the galaxy to its knees.




Interestingly we are capturing far more Silicoid than Gnolams so far as we push along the bottom of the galaxy. That'll change as we get to their core systems, but for now we are merely enslaving those that they enslaved first. Meanwhile a couple of our richer worlds start supplying more troop transports, to ensure we don't run out too quickly.




I'm sure this is a crime against sanity itself, but we're even keeping these Darloks around.

SD 3526.3 - The Antarans 'visit' Gnol and smash the secondary planet there. This deprives us of the opportunity to invade it.

SD 3526.5 - For the first time in several auto-encounters, the Gnolam had the effrontery to blow up one of our warships at Xiphias Prime. This is the last system remaining before their homeworld falls. Insulting, but of little consequence ... we have a dozen more and can replace it easily.

These days I'm spending the most time shifting around Meklar citizens, and even that is of marginal utility. But it makes me feel like I'm doing more than moving ships around, and who knows how many more wars we'll need to wage before the curtain falls.




As we push our way into the Gnolam home system, this arrives. We don't have the ability to upgrade our ship-producing facilities for Titan/Doom Star levels of absurdity, so there's little more we can do that's useful in Construction.

Smashing Gnol (1:11)


Another loss is taken as we conquer the Gnolam homeworld, and we're about out of ground troops. But we forgot about one planet in Xiphias, so we'll need to head back there anyway to finish this war. It's almost over.




The chamber is emptier of late. That's because we just finished off the Gnolams. GNN hasn't even gotten out a flash update yet.

** Trilarians (8) -- Abstain
** Bulrathi (6) -- Overmind!
** Alkari (4) -- Overmind!

Wow. We get two of the three 'lesser races' to vote for us. Morfane gets 11 votes, which combined with the 8 from the Trilarians is 19 ... and that's not enough!!

With 33 of the 62 total, just over half the galaxy, we vote ourselves.







But ... but ... but Nazin delenda est!! (said it so you don't have to)




Our first and best friends, who almost never voted for us in the Council.




They've received the last of our tribute payments, with which we bought their peace. Now the bears, who were for much of the game our biggest potential threat, bow to us.




You were consistently hostile to us, our interests, and our near-allies. Sit down and shut up.




Eliminated the Gnolams on literally the last turn of the game. I was going to head for Pegasus (the Space Dragon) and Orion next. All of that is academic now though. I figured it would take at least one more war to see me through to victory ... the others voting to put us just over the top - one more vote than needed - was a surprise.

And frankly I didn't think the Klackon bonii were quite as strong as they were. On Impossible Uncreative, I fully expected to get my brains beat in.

I've learned much about Master of Orion 2 from this LP. I hope you've enjoyed it. I'll have another post with a final comparison between this and the original for you all to argue with if you like, and a bit about the next retro game on the agenda.