Neptune’s Pride 2 Journal (Part 1 of 4) – Once more unto the breach

Early in 2013 me and my friends played a closed game of Neptune’s Pride 2: Triton, before even the glorious saga that was the war of the Space Bears. During the surprisingly brief, two-week-long game, I once again kept a journal of the exploits of my Empire in a rise and fall of epic proportions. Despite it now being two years later, I kept all my materials and have finally decided that the time is ripe to post the story.

Emperor of Eleryo, His Royal Highness Snekenj the Magnificent- Journal Log 1

Stardate: 16/04/20013

Our great Empire has come to the sudden realisation that we are not alone in this Galaxy of ours. In fact we share it with another seven newly space-faring civilisations all in a similar position as us, in that they are just starting to expand beyond their first colonies.

Somehow… This is all very familiar… As if it had happened to us before in another life…

Our position is not the best with our homeworld in the heart of the local cluster. It is, unfortunately, an already dubious position. Our systems are positioned in a sector which means we are surrounded by another FOUR species. Inferior and barbarians they may be, but scholars and artisans die before the sword as easily as soldiers.

Not only are we the only ones to have the high honour of having four opponents surrounding our starting position but our neighbours actually appear to have a greater planet density in their sectors meaning they will have to travel shorter distances to reach new colonies. Well, our species has always enjoyed a challenge…

Currently our plan is simple, make friends. We have to keep in the good graces of those around us long enough for us to become strong. And then we will crush the purples… Simply put, attacking them puts our back into an edge and thus we will no longer be surrounded on all sides, and our finest tacticians have assured us that this will be a vastly stronger position. In accordance with this great endeavour we have sent peaceful messages to those around us and have already started negotiations with the green Tim (Herbians). As well as this we have already the beginnings of a full alliance with the dark blue Alis and will coordinate our research to the benefit of us both. To our folly, we accidentally spent most of our budget on improving the infrastructure of our colonies, the people had been crying out for a new orchestra house for years, forgetting to buy Supercarriers. Thus with only ONE active fleet our early colonisation hopes could already be in tatters.

Amidst our plans we have one simple worry. If we were one of those on an edge, or neighbouring 3 or even only 2 other civilisations, we would (in the early to middle stages of our expansion) make peaceful advances to all of them and then gang up on the weakest of them with the others, eradicating others one by one. And there is no getting around it at this stage, with four possibly hostile species around me, WE are the obvious target. If we were the Herbians, yellow Kendo or teal CJ we would ally with the other three around us to crush the one in the centre and divide his lands up between us. And we don’t even mention purple Ford there because, unless he expands in an extremely odd manner, there is only ONE way for him to advance into the rest of the Galaxy: through US…

And that is why we shall endeavour to crush him first.

 

 

[Updated several hours later]

 

We feel it worthwhile recording more of our thoughts because there have been some developments over the course of the planning stage. First up is that we have received responses from all the other empires other than Kendo and orange Docco. Kendo is, we imagine, sleeping peacefully. Docco on the other hand we haven’t approached. And from all of them we have heard the same thing “being friends sounds good”. Well we say that, but the Ford to our “east” have said that they will “consider” being friends with us. We are very aware though that we don’t think friendship is ever going to happen between us.

The reason we suggested that we work together? Tim might attack him and we could, naturally, help. Why is this bullshit? Simple! At this early stage in the game no-one has the hyperdrive tech to allow them to cross the Great Space Wall in between where Ford and our own position and that of the Herbians is. Late game this will change, but for now it’s pretty simple. Ford will attack us and so the only option for victory is to crush him into oblivion before we get trapped.

Meanwhile Ali has straight up told us that he is going to attack the Kendo, which is fine by me. What is less fine is that he suggests dividing up his territory between us. While it would make sense normally, two on one is always good and it would put us both in a stronger position, in this one particular example looking at the star map we can only see our own empire becoming completely over-extended if we attack Kendo. No. It’s not something we feel will benefit us… Much… If we can nab a few decent systems early on that might keep Ali happy and simultaneously keep Kendo occupied.

The next thing is where the diplomacy of the game comes into play. Our wise Eleryoian scientists and Ali’s slightly haphazard and bumbling ones are going to share all our science. All of it. For now, of course… However, we will also endeavour to trade techs with other empires for only ONE of our shared sciences. That way everyone gets the same added bonus that we will both have, and we will both have the techs of their nations. It could put us significantly into the lead technology wise.

The final thing does deserve some special mention. As previously mentioned, we only had one active Supercarrier and so had resigned ourselves to having a very hard time expanding as fast as the others. That was until we requested some money from the far distant pink Jamrollians, as we required only an additional 3 credits for at least one more fleet. Instead of the necessary 3 credits required for one fleet he sent us a full 50 credits, a basket of his finest females and his good wishes.

And we wonder what his game is? We, naturally, feel guilty at first for accepting the money he would so obviously need and feel guilty all the way to our Stardock where we swiftly commission two new Supercarriers which were swiftly sent to carry the brave Eleryoian explorers to new homes and territories. I know… I’m a scumbag. However, in doing this the Jamrollians have won a friend. And not just an ally who will stab him in the back but we mean a true friend. We will happily try and play this game so that it will be between me, Ali and Jamroll and we will do it however we can.

We wonder if that was his game actually…