by Creamsteak
The game was setup as follows:Rise of the Ancients Features
Rare Technologies
Developments
Ancient Homeworlds
Warp Portals
Direction of Play
Players/Races
Sharky - Terran
FNG - Terran
Creamy - Syndicate
Shipp - Exiles
The first round was mostly exploration. Not a single player wanted to challenge an ancient early. The board started with Sentient Hull as an option. I believe everyone managed to just use all their colony ships, nothing was researched.
During the second round I picked up the Sentient Hull and attacked an ancient. FNG managed to uncover two discoveries with the artifact orbitals. Shipp and I formed diplomacy. Sharky burned a lot of materials and money to research advanced economy early.
Third round I took my first ancient. Other players continued to passively expand. Very non-aggressive game. Discovery tile was a Warp Portal leading to the back of Sharky's empire. He had overspent the previous turn on that research and was in a bad position for a couple rounds anyway.
Small expansion and farming in the fourth round. I believe this is when I researched the development for +12 research and put it into quantum computers. There was also a shortage of Advanced Robotics on the board for most of the game so this was a pretty hefty leverage.
Fifth round I discovered the ion turret and tried to take the center with four sentient hull ion-turret fighters. The missile barrage opening was all four hits despite my shields which put a damper on that. I lost all my fighters trying to finish it, probably a bad call on my part since it was only ~1%? chance of having such a bad opening salvo. Shipp was quick to jump into the lead, though FNG had the "best" systems in terms of production. Sharky lingered behind.
Sixth round I tried to recover, FNG was in very good shape and had a single bottle neck. I was looking weak. Shipp looked far ahead. Sharky was in good shape now compared to his earlier overextention into research, but didn't have much fleet.
Seventh round Shipp made the same fatal mistake I did and lost multiple interceptors, cruisers, and a dreadnaught to the new and improved galactic defense system. I picked up random explore discoveries and lost the warp portal to FNG. Sharky picked up conifold fields. I took one of the ancient homeworlds while FNG snagged the other.
Eighth round Sharky took the center with his super dreads with conifold fields and regeneration. They had single plasma cannons, however, though they rarely missed. FNG researched monoliths. It was fairly obvious that Sharky also had most of the "4" reputation tiles.
Ninth round Sharky and FNG went to war. I broke diplomacy with Shipp (mostly just to open up more reputation slots). I held back actions and even wasted a couple just to let everyone go in front of me. My third-to-last action was an influence action to pick up my home system (worth 0) and a single point system just to get more actions to take. Final two actions were moves to juggle seven fighters around in ways people couldn't particularly counter. Sharky definitely overcommitted to his FNG war, FNG didn't quite get to take advantage of his monoliths (though he did build 2) and his 50+ materials at the beginning of the round went into ships and too much other business. I realize now he should have also built a shell world. I developed the +3 VP for 13 money item.
Final Scores:
Creamy 42 (13 territory, 5 research, 13 reputation, 11 side-board)
FNG 33 (17 territory, unknown)
Sharky 32 (13 territory, 2 research, 15 reputation, 2 side-board)
Shipp 30 (17 territory, unknown)
Most of the win really just came down to other people not counting up my visible side-board points before the end of the game and overlooking that score. I also drew some needed 3s for the side board in the combat draws from this round.
My final speculation is that everyone messed up many times (we're out of practice at the game and the new elements threw some people for loops: like me getting gibbed in the center), and I think the syndicate are "fun" if anything else, simply for the added combat incentives.