Gooseberry's Tips To Get A Nuke

"All of these tricks are for blitz games, where you can take advantage of changing your move at the last second, when your opponents don't have enough time to react," wrote Gooseberry to sc-talk.

(1) THE OLDEST TRICK IN THE BOOK

So you want to score a quick win? Here's the easiest way to do it.

Start the game, as before, with way more science ships than you need. Through a few colonies in the mix to. Start to explore. When you discover a homeworld, run right to diplomacy and say "truce?!" Hopefully you have at least 2 science ships in their homeworld, with at least 1 colony lagging behind. When they accept your offerof truce, wait for the LAST 20-30 SECONDS of the turn, and switch back to war. Nuke their gullible butt for being such a sucker.

They should have built a minefield.

(2) THE FAKE OVERBUILD TRICK

Consider this situation: you have a planet called "the Beak" that has 2 attack ships and 2 sats. It's a builder. Next to this planet is an enemies planet, that contains 5 sats.

Set the attack ships to move in to the planet.

Now go to the build screen and build a huge fleet, all attack ships and minesweepers. Do this early in the turn. Wait till the very last second, and cancel all your builds except for 1 or 2 minesweepers.

If all goes well, the sucker you are fighting saw your overbuild and responded with his own overbuild. So your two attack ships kill his entire fleet, and the minesweeper pops in next round for the nuke...

(3) THE ANNOYING ENGINEER TRICK

So you've sealed yourself off in a blood game, and you're kicking back watching the fun. People on the "outside" are somewhat worried about when and where you might poke your beak back into the game, especially since they can see some of your sealed off planets.

Just to keep them on your toes, constantly be building engineers at the planets they can see, but always cancel the build before the end of the turn. (When you're sealed off, you have planety of time for such schenanigens!) If all goes well, you can induce them into a building a bunch of sats on the border, only to have to dismantle them later.

(4) THE MINEFIELD-AG TRICK

OK, those were silly tricks but this one is real.

Suppose you have a 1-front game. Your front planet is going to be nuked if you don't build a minefield. But even though there are no sweepers in sight you still have a problem: if you build a minefield, this guy might leave enough attack ships behind to get it on the next round, when you can no longer build there. You can't build behind your front, so saving it that way is impossible.

A dilemma, is it not?

Have no fear. Just do a pop-trick while you build the minefield. In other words, set the population of all your planets to 1/2 of what they should be (except for the planet that's going to have the minefield go off.) Then let him pop the minefield. At this point your ag ratio should be > 2.0.

Next round he moves in again, hoping for an easy nuke, but you can build (BoP note: Reset your systems and, with 2.00 ratio, they will be back to normal on update) at your front again! Of course sooner or later he'll bring a sweeper and you'll have to find a more permanent solution to your problem.

* * *

That's all for today! Oh, and for all those folks offended by my advice, I offer this:
YOU CAN KISS MY BIG FAT FEATHERED ASS!
WHOO-HOO! I'M A GOOOOOOSE!
HONK!
Gooseberry

Submitted Aug. 7, 1998