Cluster Wars (formerly Empyrean Challenge)

[ixnay]

Another turn, another set of shocking revelations...

First and foremost, I have a gigantic food crisis. The tutorials cleverly neglected to warn of this, ostensibly to teach us all a lesson early in the game while there's still time to recover. Ugh.

Address the shortage of food that is occurring, ( your population is eating 1/4 of 1 food per Pop per turn)—look up food requirements—and you should be out of food this turn.
Assemble 1,250,000 Farm-1’s.

You could also use the Ration order to reduce the amount of food that they eat, however this would start producing “Rebels”. You could get away with this for a few turns, but it would be problematical.

Source: http://www.clusterwars.com/cluster-wars-tutorial

That was in the turn-2 tutorial, which in its original emailed form did not include the warning about sending ships out with no food. I accept full blame for not remembering to address the food question before building those ships. But turn-2 was a little late to warn of this issue. If my theory about population hoarding food until its stockpile is complete is correct, even doubling my farms on turn 1 wouldn't have resolved the crisis fast enough to get ships outfitted so fast.

Also, one of the moderators sent a separate email about the food crisis -- and admitted that he had put it into the test configuration so long ago he hadn't remembered it himself. In that email he advised those of us who were tripped up by it to take it as a lesson learned cheaply, and that we can still get some scouting done if those starving ships move quickly.

I do not forget that this is a test game. I imagine in a real commercial game this food crisis will not be baked in. I also imagine that the rules will more clearly state how food-stockpiling works, to help players plan accordingly.