4.1 10x10 Haiku
Ten Haikus on low effort, 10-second ticks, 100 ticks, the same map as the Sonnet game. The setup is in chapter 4.
Result
The game ran to the turn limit. Quell Autarchy won on score with 9 planets. Nobody was eliminated, and the spread between first and last was 842 to 344.
45 battles, 7 planets captured, 60 colonies founded, 278 messages and 76 stance declarations, 72 of them peace. No faction was ever founded.
| Place | Empire | Planets | Peak | Ships | Score | Messages sent | Medal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Quell Autarchy | 9 | 9 | 46 | 842 | 25 | gold |
| 2 | Nova Hegemony | 7 | 7 | 47 | 793 | 18 | silver |
| 3 | Aurora Marches | 8 | 9 | 43 | 711 | 27 | bronze |
| 4 | Ozric Coalition | 8 | 8 | 36 | 620 | 27 | |
| 5 | Obsidian Order | 8 | 8 | 29 | 607 | 32 | |
| 6 | Risen Fellowship | 7 | 7 | 31 | 577 | 50 | |
| 7 | Altair Brood | 6 | 9 | 58 | 521 | 27 | |
| 8 | Eclipse Primacy | 5 | 5 | 46 | 501 | 22 | |
| 9 | Vael Hierarchy | 7 | 7 | 29 | 479 | 25 | |
| 10 | Valen Diaspora | 5 | 5 | 24 | 344 | 25 |
Peak is the most planets the empire held at any tick. Score counts planets, population, fleet strength and research, which is why Quell's 9 planets beat Aurora's 8 by more than a planet's worth.
The whole game on the god view, one second per tick:
Timeline
| Tick | What happened |
|---|---|
| 3 | First contact: Altair Brood meets Eclipse Primacy. |
| 4 to 14 | The busiest talk of the game, 77 messages in 11 ticks: peace offers, border lines and requests to keep scouts out. |
| 26 | First capture. Valen Diaspora takes Mardramar from Altair Brood. They'd met, but neither had declared peace. |
| 34 to 39 | A fleet of Aurora Marches attacks a Quell scout just as the two agree peace. Quell protests, and Aurora calls its war stance an error and declares peace. |
| 43 | 60 of the 70 planets are owned. |
| 52 to 68 | Altair Brood takes Ethkazen from Valen Diaspora, then loses Tisbra, Orul and Ethkazen to three neighbours it had never made peace with. |
| 77 to 78 | Altair Brood and Valen Diaspora make peace, after three captures between them. |
| 88 to 96 | Obsidian Order sets a patrol fleet to "not blue, shoot it". The patrol attacks Quell and then Aurora, and each attack counts as a declaration of war. Quell declares war back. Obsidian apologises to both, and by tick 96 both have accepted peace again. |
| 92 to 95 | Vael Hierarchy takes Ulnytis from Altair Brood. Nova Hegemony takes Riethlo from Aurora Marches. |
| 100 | Turn limit. Quell Autarchy wins on score. |
How the game went
Everyone grew at the same pace. The ten lines on the chart rise together and level out between 5 and 9 planets. The map was full by about tick 55, and after that the only way to grow was to take a planet from someone, which happened seven times.
The wars were mostly ones nobody declared. Empires that haven't declared peace are at war by default. By the end, 34 of the 45 pairs of empires had made peace. The other 11 pairs had all met, but none of them ever exchanged a message or declared anything to each other, so they stayed at war without either side choosing it. Every one of the seven captures was between two empires that weren't at peace at the time, and five of them were made against Altair Brood.
Altair Brood was the one in the middle. It held 9 planets at tick 56 and ended with 6. It was at default war with three neighbours, Vael Hierarchy, Obsidian Order and Nova Hegemony, and lost worlds to two of them and to Valen Diaspora before that pair made peace. It received more messages than anyone (53) and ended with the most ships (58), but none of that stopped the losses.
Postures caused the only war near the end. Obsidian Order set a patrol to "not blue, shoot it" with an engage radius of 4. With no factions in the game, nobody was blue, so the patrol fired on the first fleets it met: Quell's and then Aurora's, both at peace with Obsidian. The engine counts that as a declaration of war. Obsidian's own notes put the war down to "their attack at Ulsel", meaning Quell's. To Aurora it called both attacks a patrol's mistake.
The identities showed in the messages. An identity is only a line of character text in the briefing, but the agents wrote in it. An autarchy is "self-sufficient, proud and dismissive of anyone else's claims", and Quell Autarchy answered to no council and didn't beg. A diaspora is "a scattered people without a true homeland", and Valen Diaspora offered peace as "a scattered people seeking only a home". A fellowship is "a brotherhood of equals" that values "mutual aid and keeping faith", and Risen Fellowship sent the most messages of all: 50, and 30 of them mention faith.
In their own words
Eclipse Primacy to Altair Brood: your scout roams our space. We prefer order to war. Offer peace and we will split the northern stars; refuse and our fleets will answer.
Eclipse Primacy, tick 4
Valen Diaspora proposes peace. We are a scattered people seeking only a home. Keep your borders and we will keep ours.
Valen Diaspora, tick 7
Aurora Marches: you declared war on us while we held peace. Withdraw your fleets from our space and we will consider peace again. Quell Autarchy does not beg.
Quell Autarchy, tick 36
Quell: the war stance was an error on our side and is corrected to peace as of this tick. Our fleets stay out of your sectors.
Aurora Marches, tick 38
Obsidian Order: our attack at Ulsel was a mistake of a patrol. We offer peace. Keep out of Ulsel and we keep out of Riethlo.
Obsidian Order, tick 92
Observations
- No agent was on time once. 625 of 628 turns were late and 3 ran past the 30-second limit. 4.3 looks at what that did.
- The Haikus talked all game. Messages peaked in the first 15 ticks but never stopped: there was at least one in most ticks to the end.
- Nobody founded a faction, though every briefing explained them and the pilot had one by tick 5.
- 64 of 2,395 orders failed (2.7%), nearly all rule mistakes: a corvette ordered at a planet with no shipyard, or a defence grid past level 5.
- The whole game cost $3.76 at API prices: about $0.38 per agent and $0.006 per turn.