Twitch Livestream Playthrough: Taciturn Humans

This is the short summary of a game that I played on Livestream in Spring 2025 as part of my ongoing Civ Fridays series. I had previously been playing Civ7 on Livestream for the past two months, with this being the period immediately following that game's release, and the unpopularity of Civ7 along with increasing fatigue with the new game led me back to this old classic instead. Despite having played about 50 full games of Master of Orion over the years, I still find the gameplay fresh and engaging with lots of variant ideas still to be tried out. For this game, I'd had several requests to feature the Humans again since I hadn't played them since my first few MOO Livestreams. The Humans are one of the best races in Master of Orion with good research (they are "Excellent" in Force Fields along with being "Good" in Planetology and Propulsion) and having their innate trade route bonus. Of course the strongest aspect of the Humans is their diplomacy, with them having the single best diplomatic situation in the game by starting at "Relaxed" relations with everyone. They are the best race in the game for cheesing undeserved Council victories by virtue of everyone liking them so much.

I had another variant challenge to pair with the Humans in this game known as the Taciturn variant. This was an old concept from Realms Beyond that originated with Civ3 and has been used at times for Master of Orion as well. There's only one simple rule: no initiating diplomatic contact with any of the AI opponents. The player can respond to offers that the AI proposes, however they cannot make any requests of their own doing. This means no asking for tech trades, no initiating trade income, no war declaration requests, and so on. The concept is pretty basic but it ends up being a real challenge by taking so many of the normal diplomatic options off the table. It's also a fun variant to pair with the Humans because their powerful innate diplomacy gives them more of a fighting chance, with lower odds to have the whole galaxy dogpile them for an instant loss. Trying this same variant with someone like the Darkloks or the Mrrshans would almost guarantee a Council loss with little that the player could do to prevent it.

I rolled a Standard sized map with normal settings for Impossible difficulty and the game was underfoot. The starting position appeared in the northwest corner of the galaxy with no potential AI empires in the immediate vicinity, though there was a wide belt of yellow stars running diagonally across the map where most of them had to be concentrated. I faced an immediate setback when the green star next to the homeworld held a Minimal size 10 planet, ouch! That was the worst possible option that could still be colonized, and yet I still felt that I had no choice but to plant my flag there. While there was also a red star within 3 parsecs, it was located in the wrong direction and trying to go there risked spending five turns moving in the wrong direction, finding a hostile planet there, and then spending another five turns moving back to the Minimal 10 world again. So I bit the bullet and was forced to take this spot which was a real detriment to my overall growth curve. (The red star wound up having a medium-sized Poor Arid world when I scouted it later so that wouldn't have been much better either.)

There was some good news as the scout reports started arriving over the following turns. This stellar neighborhood had almost entirely habitable planets present and some of them were quite large, with a Jungle 90 planet in the backlines and an incredible Fertile Arid 110 directly to the south! That was a spot that I had to prioritize before one of the AI races could get there. I also found an Artifacts planet which pulled Improved Industrial 9 as its free tech. That was a decent if not great option; better than getting something irrelevant for growth curve purposes like an early weapon or a Battle Computer, while not being as good as faster engines or increased range or something in Planetology. At least having 10% cheaper factories did help me build them everywhere, even if II9 is one of the cheapest techs in the game to research.

The top priority was obviously reaching and then colonizing the Arid 110 planet in the south. I built factories until the homeworld had completely maxed out around 2325 and then checked to see what my research options looked like. I missed out on Improved Eco Restoration and had to grab Terraforming +10 in the Planetology field while my luck was better in Propulsion where the necessary Range 5 tech was present. I researched that with all available speed, helped out by the Humans being "Good" in this field, then raced a colony ship as soon as the extended range had been unlocked. To my delight, I did manage to reach the planet first which we christened Big Boy in a nod to its size. This also brought me into contact with the Sakkra who were Pacifist Expansionists (an odd personality for them) and who had claimed the whole southwest corner of the map. Normally I would have signed them up to a trade agreement and hopefully a future Non-Aggression Pact. In this game though, all I could do was keep an eye on their bar graphs and wait to respond to any offers they sent my way.

I took care to build my standard military force for the early game, roughly 50 popgun fighters packing a single Laser apiece. Experience has taught me that this is enough ships to chase away light probes from the AI, and while it won't stop one of their mainline fleets, nothing the player can build this early will do that anyway until missile bases can be deployed. These ships held a defensive position over Big Boy while the homeworld concentrated on constructing colony ships to grab the rest of the planets in the northwest corner. When I opened the rest of the tech fields, I was also disappointed to find that there was no Reduced Industrial Waste 80% available as a research option which meant that I had missed the entire first generations of waste cleanup tech. Usually I would find a way to fix that hole in the tech tree via trades which sadly wasn't an option this time around.

As the game continued to unfold, I soon discovered that I was able to colonize everything in my corner of space but without having any luck at pushing further afield. There was a wide gulf of space to my east, and by the time that I was able to push across it with my scouts, I found that everything over there was already claimed. The two big dogs in this galaxy appeared to be the Sakkra along with a Meklar empire that I hadn't met yet. That was bad news since a strong Meklar power can absolutely overwhelm the player with their endless factories and fleets of Huge ships. I was able to vote for the Sakkra in the early Council meetings and boost relations into the stratosphere so hopefully they would at least leave me alone. Unfortunately I made a real mistake at the tail end of the colonization phase:

This Barren planet was clearly in my core space and I was about to colonize it as I'd recently unlocked Controlled Tundra technology. I was only holding an unarmed scout over the planet because I didn't think the Sakkra had the range to arrive, which they didn't, but they had signed an alliance with the Psilons that allowed them to reach here. The lizards sent a single armed colony ship which was enough to chase away my scout and claim the planet, argh! If I had only thought to send my Laser ships over here once Big Boy had been secured, I could have chased the Sakkra away with ease and then locked down the spot for myself. I did not want them to have Antares under their control since it extended their range to everything else in my core territory. If they had been stuck down at Galos then I could have concentrated all my defenses at Big Boy; instead, now I was going to have to build bases everywhere for safety's sake.

I had more bad news in the Force Field tree when I reached the third tier and discovered that Planetary Shield V was missing. This was going to leave me highly vulnerable to attack from any of my neighbors as 2-4 points of shielding from the deflector techs alone don't stop much beyond the initial guns. Then shortly thereafter I found that I was missing both of the second generation waste cleanup techs as well: no Reduced Waste 60% and no Enhanced Eco Restoration. That was truly nasty and an inability to get any waste cleanup going would keep my economy in low gear even though I did have Improved Robotics III in the Computers field. I was really feeling the lack of tech trades here as I surely could have parlayed Improved Robotics III into at least one of these techs, not to mention I was also lacking any trade income where my Humans would have been hugely benefiting in a normal game. All that I could do was continue researching for the moment and hope to reach higher tiers of technology where these gaps would be remedied.

After voting for the Sakkra several times in the Council, they came to me with this offer:

They wanted a full alliance, sheesh! I would have been content with some trade and maybe an NAP instead of jumping directly to a full alliance. I thought about this for a minute before deciding to turn them down. The Sakkra were already at war with the Meklars and I didn't want to get pulled into that conflict; there was a very real chance that I'd pass the cyborgs in population and then I could find everyone voting for the Sakkra in the next Council election if I joined them in their war against the Meklars. I also felt as though I was already in a safe position here, with the Sakkra having a Pacifistic personality and with our relations meter sitting at Calm (the highest it can go without signing an alliance). These Sakkra were peaceful in nature, we had extremely strong diplomacy, and they already were at war with the Meklars. What could possibly go wrong?

And... this was the point at which this game went off the rails. Those oh-so-peaceful Sakkra turned out to have Antimatter Bombs in their tech tree and made them the centerpiece of their ship designs. It wasn't long after that offered alliance that the lizards showed up at Big Boy with their main fleet, which chased away my popgun Laser fighters and then did this:

No, not Big Boy! That was my single best planet and it had the highest number of missile bases as well. I think that it had 8 of them which were swatted away with almost contemptuous ease by the Sakkra. With only minimal shielding they were completely helpless against those Antimatter Bombs, not that having the Planetary Shield V for 7-8 points of shielding would have done much against enemy bombs hitting for 20-40 damage apiece. It was humilitating to watch their ships that lacked bombs and were only sporting Neutron Blasters be able to shoot through my defenses as well. The Sakkra took the time to conduct a planetary invasion after they bombed out the factories and thereby seized full control of Big Boy. What was incredible was that they never declared war and our relations meter was still as high as it could go short of signing an alliance. We were still basically best friends! In a fit of grim humor, the Sakkra leader was also named "Sauron" in this game which led to a bunch of jokes about the Lord of the Rings deceiving everyone, plotting treachery behind a fair face. Well, he certainly fooled me in this game!

At this point things looked pretty bleak and I had to fall back on longshot strategies in the hopes of getting back into contention. Since I couldn't stop the Sakkra mainline fleets from running over my worlds, there wasn't much point in wasting production on defenses. All that I could do was pour everything into more research in the hopes of deploying more technology while praying that the lizards left me alone. My plan was to build a fleet and attack the Psilons to the east, who were very weak with only three planets to their name and might be able to serve as source of captured technology. But before I could put that plan into motion, the Sakkra were back again with this fleet:

With better shielding I could have fought off the Neutron Blaster-based designs, though the Heavy version of the weapon does 3-24 damage (cut to 1-12 damage against planetary bases) and would still have gotten through to some extent. I only had 4 points of shielding though which left my planets a sitting duck, not to mention the Antimatter Bombs would have sliced right through my defenses even if I did have shields. The Sakkra had free run on any planet that they chose to attack and they focused the weakest point in my defenses, the Poor planet of Pauper. This time they had enough bombs on hand to eliminate my colony from orbit without having to launch an invasion:

This was the point at which I gave up on this game as a lost cause. The Sakkra were running roughshod through the middle of my territory with no ability for me to stop them, and me without any techs on the horizon that might have added a degree of safety. Even worse, the Meklars now had ships incoming that almost certainly had hostile intentions as well, and if I couldn't stop the lizards, I certainly couldn't stop the galaxy's other major power too. Given the variant that I was playing under, I also couldn't talk to anyone or wriggle out of this situation diplomatically - I was stuck. The Taciturn ruleset was proving to be more difficult than I had anticipated since it left me at the mercy of poor RNG in terms of what showed up in the tech tree while being unable to influence what was going on diplomatically in the wider galaxy. In a normal game I might have been able to get the Sakkra and Meklars pointed more directly at each other, not this time though.

I had been rather unlucky in terms of having such a weak second planet and then suffering through a bunch of critical tech gaps between waste cleanup and planetary shielding. I had also made two serious mistakes though: first in failing to move my handful of military ships to hold a blockade over Antares and then again in not signing that alliance with the Sakkra. The mistake of not blocking the Barren planet was a true goof, an unnecessary error that served as a prelude to the disaster that followed. The AI pathfinding causes them to seek out targets for attack near their frontline worlds, and if the Sakkra didn't control that planet, they would have been much less likely to pick me out for aggression. Then I could have bought myself a magical shield of protection for at least a little while by allying with the lizards, giving me more time to advance down the tech tree. Even though there were clear risks to hopping in bed with the Sakkra, in retrospect it was clearly the correct call since they could and did run over my worlds thereafter.

This game didn't work out so I resolved to try again in the next Livestream session. That's been happening a number of times with these different variants, failing the first time and then doing better the second time around. How would my luck fare on the repeat venture?