building military

I think the game measures the comparitive attack power of your ships. More guns with stronger attack power will increase your military rating. I to almost never build as many ships as the AI (They just build so so many). But my ships end up being so powerful, the rating passes them.

My military can almost always hands down beat the AI's, but I'm also usually sitting at a 40 for my military rating but at a 200 or more for my tech rating.

The military rating that the game reports is only intended to give you a rough estimate of an empire's total military capabilities. It does not, however, measure an empire's ability to project power effectively.

For example, if the Altarians have a military rating of 608. If they have 80% of their fleet scattered throughout their empire AND still docked on their planets...their military rating means absolutely zip. All you would need to do is gather a couple of fleets of ships and start picking off their ships one at a time while they're still berthed.

Managing your projection of power is far more important than any numbers the game reports to you.

Personally I like to concentrate my build power on a handful of planets.
Basically cover the entire planet with factories and crank out the starships in one turn. Duel systems are especially nice when I can get the most out of the star bases supporting them.

From what i've seen the Military rating seems to be mostly calculated from Number of ships as opposed to power. The AI nearly always has a higher military rating then me. But when we go to war i crush there legions of weak ships with my more powerful ships.

My way is this.
I build no military - period.
I research. And as soon as I can I get Xeno Ethics so I can align with Neutrality, then research the Neutrality Learning Centers in the Research branch. Those give the highest research return, and soon I have the most powerful weapons and defenses. As they are building ships, which usually only have one type of weapon, I research the defense for their weapons and my own weapons that they are not defending for.

During this I am building factories like crazy, especially on a few select worlds.

Then when war is declared on me, I check to see how much defense I need to build into a single ship to counter their fleets.

Don't forget to get at least medium size ship building and some miniturization.

I recently won a cultural victory at tough level even thought the Terran seem to have better ships then me. I need to settle on what percent shields, weapons and engines is optimal for a balanced yet powerful battle ship. Next game I'm looking at about 25% shields, 25% engines and 40% weapons. Any ideas on whats a good balance.

Hi!

Any ideas on whats a good balance.

- Main warship: medium+ hull, good speed (1 or 2 best engines), a bit more defences than your opponent's most common ship design has attack, rest weapons. Sub-variant (too kill escorted troop transports) has 3 engines.
- Interceptor: tiny/small/cargo hull, 3-5 best engines, single small weapon, rest range extenders. With Eyes wreakes havoc in opponents backyard. Most of the time it's converted early sensor ship based on cargo hull.
- "Defender": cargo hull, 3 cheapest and different type 1-attack weapons. Gives 6 attack points when in orbit.

BR, Iztok

Hi!

what should i do to build a strong army?

Forget about millitary graph. What matters is the type of defense and type of attack ships have. If you have on your ships weapons they don't have proper defenses for, and defenses that match their weapons, you have BIG advantage. Run a ship combat simulator several times to get the killed/lost ratio, then apply that ratio to your mil stats, and you'll realize that all off a sudden their displayed mill stat 250 to your 80 actually means 70 to 120 in your advantage.

BR, Iztok

If your military rating doesn't rise compared to the enemy's, even after pumping out dozens of powerful ships, there's a good chance they have a few fully-mined military resources. Hunt them down and kill them and watch their military rating plummet.

The German military was rated higher than the soveit military shortly before the Germans rolled into that nation. *cough* cough* but it meant little. Take that to mean what you want it to.

Main warship: medium+ hull, good speed (1 or 2 best engines), a bit more defences than your opponent's most common ship design has attack, rest weapons. Sub-variant (too kill escorted troop transports) has 3 engines.

My medium hulls are usually my version of a small ship compared to my military. after i've won a war, I build a fleet filled with massive ships. My large ships act more like my frigates.