Map 5 - Not Everyone Is A Beginner

One of the reasons I stopped posting my diary was criticism that I was playing beginner games. Though this was true at the old Lysator server, it was not at Regensburg. I had not created a new empire, and hence have access to beginner games, since December. But a name came along that was too tempting not to add to my arsenal of empire names. Besides, as many people have found, it's not easy finding games by just logging onto Regensburg. And playing the same people over and over at mIRC was getting old. In one of my first beginner games, No. 10,000, I was nuked by a sneaky empire that went to truce with me and alliance with another empire. He then built a fleet, went off trade and, before I could respond with satellites, came over and nuked by outermost builder. That gave him access to another wealthy system and kept me boxed up. I'm not much different than most players. I didn't like it. Two other players had ruined. I did get a nuke of one player without losing too many ships. So when I found this cruel empire a couple days later in a beginner game, I broadcast his game plan and proceeded to prepare for war. And what a great war I received. My beginner ally - met in a beginner game a few days earlier - and I prevailed but it too some guile and patience. All the time I kept let my role playing match my empire's name. This caused my opponent to suggest I get on mIRC to meet other players. After the game, I did and discovered who owned this sneaky, mean-spirited empire = Agt! When my ally and I took on Agt he had more systems than us and a bit more econ than my empire. We managed to repel his attacks at our outer system. So we both went to building satellite walls. I built three. Agt built more than 10. The way we broke through to Agt was with cloakers. I sometimes feel - correctly or not - that when your cloakers travel over a system, sats there dip in strength just a bit. To make sure this did not occur, if indeed it does, I sent in one attack as I passed to disrupt his sat's strength. My ally, who really does have some swell thin mints, managed to move the many systems to the front. As we attacked his system, I uncloaked four cloakers. I managed to nuke two systems and had two systems go in half due to minefields going off. This was a big enough dent in Agt's resources for us to eventually build a bigger, better fleet which successfully penetrated his defense. In this game, Agt managed to get a doomsday to a system between us, destroying any chance we had at getting GirlScout a forward system. I did not know you could destroy a non-colonized system. But you can. The names of Agt's and my empires have been changed, to protect them. But their icons are correct.

Bird of Prey Map: Beginner 10037