Lightning Strikes

Consultation seeked

from GalCiv2 Forums
Having always being a great fan of technological superiority, I was wondering what you guys think of überfast ships. I read someone saying that with fast enough ships, you can take out entire civilizations in a few turns. So I was thinking - generally the AI seems to be concentrating it's efforts into massing 4+ ship small fleets, maybe later on when logistics get higher, even higher. I have always been trusting a little less amount of ships - say some capital ships. So I was thinking about pumping them full of engines with the cost of some firepower and/or shielding. Say you put in three advanced engines into some large or huge ship, you can take out like 10 small fleets in a turn and dodge the bigger fleets.

I was just thinking how much firepower can you afford to lose with the cost of making such surgeon ships. How would you balance it out and what engines would you use? I did a transport ship design of short, called 'Power Transport' which basically has mad engines and can travel medium galaxy from side to side in like 2 or 3 turns. Good for taking out worlds xD

Also, I addressed this before in the post 'Heart of the Beast', but nanoripper seems sooooooo good. What's the downside of using them? I mean they're just mad efficient and you can pump up your ships with them to get mad firepower. Does it increase the upkeep cost drastically or is there some other trait that makes it worse than the graviton tech, and even the tech after that? Against Bright computers, it's very often a victory if you get to Singular Drive IV tech...

Also, which stage do AIs start getting "bonuses"?
strategies
3,900 views 2 replies
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'll bite.

There is a lot of merit in the speed approach. Not too long ago I played a game where I found myself militarily behind--the other side had more powerful ships and more of them. My advantages was that I am human and that I had speed (4 and 5 versus 2 and 3). The speed turned out to be a force multiplier. I simply ate the other guy in pieces. First, I slipped behind the fighters and took out the transports. Then I took out his supporting starbases, and then finally I isolated ship groups and took them out one by one.

Another advantage to getting speed early is that you can do an early blitz on the bad guys. In one game against four opponents myself and another race were large and the other three were small. Very early on I blitzed two of the smaller races to get ahead.

I'm 49 and a wargamer from way back. It is like a walk down memory lane to do a blitz. In most of my games now I seek a speed advantage and when I attack I use blitz tactics (penetrate to the rear and destory weaker targets first thus isolating the stronger ones and then taking them out one by one).
Galactic Civilizations III