I hosted a game of Ti3 at my house on Sunday. We had four players myself my brother Noah, PJ Brady, and Bryan Somerville. We each drew three races and picked one. I picked Jol Nar Noah picked Barony PJ picked L1Z1X and Bryan picked Mentak. The galaxy turned out to be relatively resource rich. Everyone had a good spread of planets except for myself. I had several dual planet systems but they were all 1/0 and 0/1 or 0/2. But there did have a good variety of tech specialties that I took advantage of with my scientists.
I was essentially on the defensive all game. With Bryan Mentak threatening me and PJ Lizix hammering me throughout the game. I managed to hold off PJ with integrated economy allowing me to quickly reinforce my planets with ground forces thus avoiding him from ever really invading me and also having fully upgraded pds units with deep space graviton and magen defense grid. When PJ attacked I would move my pds units around with a scientist so that my counterattacks enjoyed 6 PDS shots when I reactivated the system. I was having trouble gaining victory points as I was so concentrated on defending my systems. And by turn 8 I was in last place with only 4.
Bryan Mentak was attacking and completing objectives by attacking Noah Barony for the majority of his game. He even produced his flagship which negates sustained damage in the system that it is in and took out a large dreadnought fleet that had Barony's racial tech noneuclidean shielding. However that was his high watermark against Barony and he was slowly forced out by combined pds and dreadnought attacks. Bryan Mentak then took Mecatol Rex. By turn 8 Bryan was in the lead with 7 victory points and looked poised to secure the two public objectives that he had not already claimed having already claimed his preliminary and secret objectives.
PJ Lizix in my opinion played somewhat erratically. At times he made all the right moves and then at others had me wondering what he was thinking. Examples of his good moves would be attacking me early and continuing to attack me throughout the game while also sniping at Barony when the opportunity presented itself for victory points or simply to deny him resources. Another example was his excellent build order with both technology and units that allowed him to be reasonably efficient throughout the entire game. However these good moves were tempered by several bad ones. First he never followed up his attacks on me with a serious invasion. He destroyed several of my large cruiser fleets including my flagship twice! However he never brought enough ground forces along to hold onto the planets that he did take or didn't bring any ground forces at all and instead simply settled for destroying my fleets. In my opinion this was a major mistake as I was relatively resource poor compared to everyone else. In fact I had been relying on taking trade coupled with micro tech for the majority of my resources. I'm not sure if I deterred any invasions by reinforcing my planets with ground forces with integrated economy or if he simply choose not to invade. I never had more than 4 ground forces on any one planet so I'm thinking it was the latter. Regardless by turn 8 PJ was in a strong position to win by achieving his secret objective and already possessing 6 victory points.
Noah Barony had several good starting systems. However he was attacked early by Bryan Mentak and spent the entire game fighting him off. I feel like he could have done a better job of resource management and technology purchases. However he is still learning the game and planning ahead and recognizing what is truly important when it comes to your limited resources is something you learn from experience. Aside from that I also feel like he made a mistake by not attacking PJ Lizix. Their border was ill defined and with PJ concentrating on me I felt like there was opportunity for some raids and resource denial. But with Mentak knocking on his front door I can understand his urgency with dealing with that. All in all Noah Barnoy still managed to score victory points and had 6 by turn 8
I keep referencing turn 8 so let me tell you what happened. The start of turn 8 saw PJ Lizix again attacking my 4 cruiser and flagship fleet that I had build up adjacent to Mecatol Rex and destroying it. I then scored 1 victory point by attacking PJ Lizix. A law had been voted into affect that the first person to attack PJ Lizix scored a victory point. PJ then counterattacked and killed my offending fleet. Barony committed itself by reconquering all of the systems it had previously lost to Byran Mentak and then rebuilding a large fleet. Bryan Mentak committed to building two wars suns and retreating from Barony's sphere of influence forming a natural border along a line of empty systems. After PJ Lizix hammering of my main fleet and attacking fleet he then followed up by taking Mecatol from Bryan Mentak and producing units in his home system.
Up until this point I hadn't yet played bureaucracy. And still had a cruiser fleet I built using the production secondary in my home system and several scattered carriers above planets with lots of ground forces. I started off by attacking Bryan Mentak. I attacked and took control of two two planet systems one adjacent to his home system. I then played bureaucracy and claimed the I control 10 planets outside of my home system public objective for 2 victory points. Giving me 7 victory points tying myself with Bryan Mentak for the lead. I then choose the last stage 1 objective that had been passed over. It was I now have more influence to the players to the left and right of me which I could now qualify for courtesy of my newly acquired planets. At this point I had to gamble. My secret objective was threatening which means controlling two systems adjacent to two separate enemies home systems. I already possessed one and I don't think I could have survived next turn. PJ Lizix had a one planet system with one ground force on it adjacent to his home system. I had one carrier with one ground force in range. I took the opportunity. PJ Lizix missed with his one pds and missed with his hitting on 7s ground force. I hit with my hitting on 9s ground force and took the planet and thus completing my secret objective. During the status phase I scored the influence objective for 1 victory point and my secret objective for 2 victory points wining the game with 10 victory points.
That turn depended on a lot of things happening and going my way. Most importantly my opponents committing themselves to producing massive fleets for the upcoming what they thought to be decisive turn. However I had bureaucracy at the perfect time and took advantage of being the weakest player by distracting them with action cards that appeared to show my strategy and stalling before making my move after everyone else had committed and thought that I couldn't do anything of importance.
All in all I thought it was a great game. I thought Bryan really played Mentak perfectly. Being very aggressive but also being aware of using that aggressiveness to both score victory points and weaken his most threatening neighbor Noah Barony. PJ Lizix also played well but I feel that he should have followed up his attacks on me and not wasted so many resources on some of his technology advances.
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