Fascinating reading everyone (except one    )

Strategies I am just developing on my map size hop through the difficulty levels.

Thanks Wynstar   

Hi Wyndstar. I have a few questions in general about the all research centers and all manufacturing centers strategy. I kind of had this idea also about just building one type of building and specializing in different cities, kind of like in Civilization 4, but would never have gotten around to testing it. Didn't realize you kind of had to specialize all research on all planets till I tried it.

So I was glad to see someone already have done it successfully.

Anyways I've tried doing all research centers on masochistic (default stuff on game type, normal research, large map. 9 opponents)

However, when I went to trade with the different AI's, they all were very broke and couldn't really pay for the techs when I needed money from them for the 100 percent production cost. So I figured the AI's economy skills were too bad and tried this on suicidal.

I was Terrans with max points into research and economy, along with 1 point in luck and rest in morale. Also was technologist party. I even tried to keep production 100 percent whole time along with 100 percent approval. But eventually my taxes went all the way down to 0 percent and approval was dropping to mid 90's. Maybe this had to do with not having the +morale researches, can't remember. It was just weird.

I got a good game going but somehow I think the AI was ahead of me in research even though I was just building research buildings. I even had a chance to colonize 2 other planets 10-13 in quality(didn't get mars). Each of the 3 planets had an asteroid field outside them and I got them all. I usually only purchased the first research building on my 3 planets to get the extra social production. After I'd say about a year I started running into researches that I couldn't get very quickly and I was having money problems. Something along -600bc a week. I tried putting economic starbases outside of each planet with just modules in +economy (not sure if this helps a lot?). I even got an economic resource maxed out. I also maxed the trade routes I could have. I went neutral btw. Didn't make it to the neutral research buildings though. I did try to lower production and raising taxes and other stuff, but with all research buildings and no production you still have like a negative 150-200 in bc. Didn't expect that.

The AI was only paying like 60 to 120 for most techs I was getting early game. Even at the end of the game I was playing, they weren't paying more than 200-400 for a tech even if they had like 10k in BC.

So I switched to manufacturing factories cause I thought it would be cheaper after about a year(maybe a bit longer), however that just made the research thing worse and I eventually lost cause i didn't have strong enough military techs to compete. Even though I had huge and large ships early, the different AI fleets would eventually wear them down or overpower them. (I captured 3 AI cities after 3 AI's declared war on me, but was overwhelmed later.) The game lasted like 4 years before I retired.

You were talking about getting research treaties early and I even met a computer player like 4 turns into the game. One wormholed to my planet. I tried giving this guy all my techs and money and the trade was still in the red for the research treaty. I tried a little later but same problem. I couldn't believe it was this hard when you made it sound like it was pretty easy early. Do you by any chance know why?

I also researched xeno research at beginning along with sensors. the early +economics, social and stuff, techs that are pretty obvious to get. Then I went to all the +plus diplomacy techs to help out with the foreign trade and to get the one or two of the different governments. I then did some of the speed techs for newer ships, and then I just did some of the 1 turn cheap techs (where I could get 2 or 3 in one turn) for trade for money. I'd kind of go off and on for the diplomacy techs and these cheap techs every other turns. I'm guessing this was a mistake. Maybe diplomacy skill doesn't affect the money you get for techs and stuff. Maybe I should have went deeper into the better research building techs early and then researched other stuff, not sure. Any insight into your research style for this strat would be interesting.

Just to be specific about my planets. I would build (on Earth) all research buildings, put tech capital here, except for the starport and 1 farm.
On the other 2 planets I built half research and half trade buildings, besides the 1 starport and 1 farm.

Anyways I know this is long but if you could get around to responding to it since its an example of a bad game. I hope its specific enough. I tried my best since there are so many variables with the game. There are probably a few things I can learn but I know if I could have lasted maybe another year with the research buildings I could have won that game I believe.

Hi!

He'll probably not. The Real Life Issues made him go for a couple of months.


At Suicidal AIs have the base bonus +300% to research and production, PLUS they got significantly more points to spend in race creation WITHOUT limitations the human player has. In two tests I've got Terrans with 80% mil production, but not industrialist party. Earth was at turn 1 capable of producing 180 military points.


Other statemenst from your post indicate you probably had too low diplomacy ability. The higher it is, the better deals you can get from AIs.

BTW Suicidal difficulty level is not called so by the chance. Better try learning the game at lower difficulty level, and only then return to Suicidal.

BR, Iztok

That sucks.

Well anyways I just wanted to see how his strat worked on large maps and stuff. See if he did anything differently.

Thanks for the strategy tips, Wyndstar. Small or tiny maps are a harder run for me, since I tend to think more long term. Using your all labs strategy until I had all of the yellow techs and the Black Hole Driver, then switching to all factories helped me win my first attempt at a suicidal game.

It felt like the tech trading was the key, since I could both sell and trade techs and then sell the newly gained techs while the AI still had money. Economy was a real challenge until the switch. Took right off after that though.

Great strategy and good reading to boot.

I'm sorry if I made this seem easy. It is easier with practice. I almost lost this game several times, and just barely skated through the early game. This could have easily been a loss.
Money is your biggest problem with this, but you need to think of your empire like a giant cruise ship. You need to know where it is going long before it gets there, and it turns slowly.

Amen.

It is.

Good luck out there.

Great thread.
Thanks Wyndstar.

I had just realised this game was complex, but you have shown me just how deep it is.

So many choices now.

One thing I have realised, is that everything in the game works on a percentage basis, so specialization is the best way to go with everything.

Hey it is a very nice strategy, I decided to go through another game the same way pretty much, just do things more efficiently. I noticed when I started the game I didn't set my abilities the way I thought I had, and actually had a +50 percent to military instead of research or economy. Anyways I was able to secure research treaties and also I'm pretty much close to the end of the tech tree. Only 5 players left including me (even wiped out one on my own) and I'm at war with 2 comps (korath and yor) and 1 (yor) has dreadnaughts like twice as powerful as anything I can create even though we have same techs maxed out. Going to ask about that since its suicidal in another thread.

1) Yor miniaturization bonus. What other race combat race bonuses do Yor have?
2) How many military resource starbases do Yor have?
3) Has UP passed the law for starbases providing assistance to allies? How many military starbases to Yor allies have?

drrider

Yeah I forgot that the comp got miniature bonuses or forgot how big they were when posting.

I just kind of didn't know how to deal with fighting superior ships at the time, but someone else explained it to me in another thread. I just have to try it out in a game.

I tried to print a screenshot to load to show you what the map and game looked like but couldn't find them in a folder after hitting the print screen button.

Yor are by far the strongest in the game I was playing and I wasn't really making any headway. I took about 5 or 6 total planets from yor and korath, but it was taking too long, and it was getting to the point where yor had a dreadnaught defending each planet along with fighters. I realized in this game how much of a pain in the ass the 3 move points in Yor influence per turn was.

Oh yeah!!!

I hate it. I play with 9 civs but on random. And whenever i see that the Yor are in the game i cringe. That 3 moves only deal ensures one thing, that the Yor are my first target, provided they are close enough, that way their influence does not spread too far and wide....

Who's bright idea was the "3 move ploy" anyway???

After reading this AAR I decided to give the strategy a try. It's going pretty well, and I thought I'd share some thoughts and observations.

First off, the game details. I'm not up to the upper difficulty levels yet, so this game is being played at Challenging. Medium-sized map, 6 opponents. I'm playing the industry variant of the strategy and didn't want to mess with spies, so I took the Yor (+20 social/military, +100 loyalty). My discretionary points went into economy, morale, and population growth, most map settings were set at random. A year in I can tell that I got abundant stars and planets, and I'm guessing common habitability (there seems to be one habitable planet around most stars). Resources are definitely rare, and anomalies seem to be uncommon. Stars are clustered, but not tightly so.

My starting planet was great... if I were going the research route. 300% and 100% research bonus tiles made me cry to build factories on them, but I stuck with it and rolled into the colony rush. A couple decent asteroid fields helped my 2nd home-system colony and my first out-system colony off to a good start. My home system was positioned in a bit of dead space on the edge of two clusters, making me have to travel a bit to reach anything (luckily the Yor start out with some engine tech). I set the sliders to 1/99/0 (m/s/r), focused my planets on research, and started ploughing through the diplomacy techs. Taxes started at 9% for 100% approval and spending locked in at 100%. So far, so good. The amount of production I was cranking out was astounding, the budget defecit equally so.

The first real problem I ran into was finding someone to trade with. When I finally did find other races, it was the Krynn and the Terrans. Ugh. Still, I was able to sell enough to them to keep me out of the red for several turns, but with ~20% of the map explored and no other races visible I was forced to lower my spending and raise my taxes. At its worst my spending got down to 75% and I was tweaking the tax slider by the turn to keep all my planets at 41% or greater approval. Then in the span of three turns I met the Korath, Korx, Torians, and a minor. I played the middle man in a lot of tech sales and set spending back to 100%; taxes got lowered so that most worlds have 100% approval.

This is the point where things really started rolling along. By this point I was researching Magesty, after covering most of the other diplo/government techs. I largely followed the order suggested by Wyndstar in his "Conquering Suicidal" thread, with occasional 1 or 2 turn diversions to research something to sell to the AI players. On their own they just weren't coming up with new tech fast enough to keep me solvent and I didn't want to sell them a diplo bonus.

First war was the Korath, after I goaded the Terrans into attacking them. It was messy but brief; the only weapons tech I had was the stuff they had traded me so we were on a pretty even keel. My production was absolutely ridiculous though, and sheer number of ships flowing to the front lines bore the enemy down.

So that's where I sit now; the Korath are neatly assimilated, bringing me up to a neat dozen worlds spread across a quarter of the map. The 6th AI turned out to be the Altarian Resistance. I'm eyeballing the terrans or the korx as my next target, even though the krynn are right in my back yard bottled up by me on three sides. The krynn are the only people I have warm relations with right now, and I'm hesitant to give that up, especially when they have to slog through my territory to reach any of the remaining uncolonized worlds. I have yet to see a barren world to make use of that side of my super ability, but the slowdown is lovely.

Based on my game so far I'm guessing this strat would be really dicey on lower difficulty levels where the AI have economic penalties or with any fewer than 6 AI in the game. As it was I had to weather a 10 turn economic crash before I had enough races to trade with, and they don't always have the cash to buy. Moreover, they aren't keeping up with the tech very well, making it hard for me to get and sell new tech from them. I think this strat actually benefits from stronger AI at higher difficulties. Still, its been a very enjoyable game so far, and I certainly have the game in hand at this point.

I also tried the all research strategy in a Tough game with 9 random AI's, very fast research and it worked pretty well, although it felt kida weird to play with -500 bc/turn for more than half the game. Sometimes i just had to switch to 100% social just to get some money and speed up the construction which felt very slow. Played with a custom race, Super Diplomat, +30% economic, +20% research, technologist party. Initially researched most diplo techs till Majesty and this really worked because eventually i was able to create a galactic free-for-all where i was the sole spectator. Only 2 other races declared war on me at the beginning before i had a decent diplomacy bonus, the first was involved in 3 wars (courtesy of my backstage string-pulling games) and the second was on the opposite side of the map. Eventually i just traded peace for techs and wasn't bothered ever again. Finished the game with a diplomatic victory, never did build a single starbase.

Two questions are in order here, for Wyndstar or anyone else who has tried this strategy.

What is your advice for speeding up planet development on a all-tech strategy?

I felt that planet development was very slow throughout the game and at -500bc/turn, it was really hard to buy labs. Most of the money i got from tech trading was just to pay the upkeep and buy things that would improve my diplomatic rating which means that most of my planets had just 1 or 2 improvements for like 70% of the game. Only when i flipped did i start to make money and build on these planets.

As for strategy, something else occurred to me. The all-tech strategy's goal is to out-tech your opponents and win through technological advantage. So you build all-labs planets. As research production costs are extremely high and you have no economic planets, you lose a lot of money and will eventually file for bankrupcy if not for one thing: tech-trading. So, in order to increase your advantage, you must sell part of it to other races which, in turn, means that your tech gap is decreasing.

Have you tried a tech/eco strategy in which you keep focus on 100% technology production but make some economic planets to offset the costs and reduce the dependance on other races? At the very least, have you tried making at least one eco planet to make use of the economic capital and the economic techs?

I tend to like "rare everything" gigantic games. 100% research, Super-lab homeworld + maybe one other, backed up by whatever economic planets & trading are necessary to balance the finances works just fine in that environment.

I never trade away techs; just seems like it defeats the major strategic advantage of the strategic approach. Also, maintaining as huge as possible a tech advantage helps make you an undesirable war target.

drrider

This is probably the hardest thing to get down, and requires balancing a lot of factors. If you have more worlds available than I did in this game, my strategy is >> get a few quick colony ships, colonize as much as you can, only build labs on my homeworld, let my new worlds breed until they are making lots of money despite my homeworlds reasearch needs. Then, when my economy has turned around (notice, all the other worlds in my empire have no buildings on them) start rush or lease buying new "production" worlds full of labs. Simple focus from your colony output should be enough to build farms/banks on your non-production worlds.


Yeah, I even did that in this game, although maybe I wasn't clear about it. By the early part of the second year, 60 turns in or so, I had 10 planets. Only four of them were production planets (Altaria, Wisp, Kora, Korx) - while the other 6 were pure farm/stock market worlds.

Hope that helps,
- Wyndstar

Sorry for dredging up an old topic, but Wyndstar, I was hoping you could elaborate a little more on this flipping thing.

I've tried on several settings, playing as several different races; all with no luck.

I find that small maps are easier to stay ahead of the economic hole and easier to build a few decoys (cargo ships loaded with cheap guns) but more often than not that triggers an assignation event that forces me to go to war earlier than I'm ready. Conversely, on a larger map, I've got a huge tech lead but a gaping financial hole that I can't dig myself out of. And then along comes the inevitable war that I can't afford and am ill-prepared for. I've tried getting bribing the other AI's to fight each other but they seem a little incompetent and then they all turn on me.

You make this sound so easy (the mark of a true master, I suppose ); how do you do this before going broke or ending up dead?

I haven't tried to all labs strategy because I prefer the flexibility of the all factories strategy.

The medium map is the hardest map to win on suicide.
On tiny maps you can rush the AI.
On gigantic maps the colonization phase lasts much longer (the AIs don't get aggressive until this phase ends) and the AIs will cripple their economy by expanding too fast (quickly spending the starting game capital on buying colony ships and factories rather than building them). Also these maps have the most galactic resources that can net you a global bonus of up to 39% each! A skilled human player is much better at claiming these than the AI and will pay AIs to go to war so that he/she may claim their resources when their starbases are destroyed by the enemy.

I've documented a recent suicide medium map game in great detail which I plan to post with screen shots. However, this forum removes all extra whitespace messing up my formatting!

Please, how are you building hundreds or thousands of ships per turn? I can't ever get more than 1 per colony per turn. I'm lucky if i can get a ship out in 2 turns per colony. Please explain.

Brian

Wyndstar,

I'm trying to come to grips with your technique. I have taken one of my planets in a current game i am running and messing with the sliders to learn what it is you're doing. I am, though, running into something that doesn't make sense. Can you help?

My original settings for my sliders are as such:

Tax rate: 35%
Approval: 59%
NetIncome: 143
100% spending
29%-29%-42%
My Home planet Dollar has the following:

16.08B 29-29-42 0-99-1
FM FS FR XX FM FS FR
Mil 36 61 16 26 0 63 0 0
Soc 33 15 56 24 118 59 118 88
Res 26 18 18 38 0 0 0 26

Income 96 96 96 96 96 96 96 96
Spending 80 79 79 78 95 95 95 95
Maintenence 15 15 15 15 15 15 15 15
RoE 19 6 11 25 6 11 6 7
Dest 10 40 22 14 NV 6 NV NV

I use the abbreviations above:

FM = Focus Military
FS = Focus Social
FR = Focus Research
RoE = Resturant of Eternity (in queue) #turns remaining
Dest = Destroyer (in queue) #turns remaining
NV = Never (production time)

So far i'm thrilled with the results i see. Next I do something and it totally confuses me to bits. I remove the RoE from the queue. Now it totally changes ALL my numbers.


0-99-1
FM FS FR
Mil 80 40 80 60
Soc (80) (40) (80) (60)
Res 0 0 0 26

Income 96 96 96 96
Spending 15 55 15 35
Maintenence 15 15 15 15
Dest NV 9 NV NV

*The (##) is transferred to Mil.

Why do I lose production, Shields and Hammers, when i take something out of my queue?

I do notice that my net income goes from 12BC up to 111 BC when i take it out of my queue. I guess what is happening is that shields and hammers are NOT production stats, but BCs spent doing stuff? I still would have thought that it would go to 0 if i'm not spending anything. Then again, WHY, if production is being transferred (##) to mil, is the destroyer NOT being built even though it shows money being shifted to military?

Anyway, i can see how you can easily run into deficit spending by utilizing this strategy. I was just screwing around with JUST one planet, albeit the largest of them.

Another thing i noticed is that I changed the sliders to 1-99-0(res). This made my Net Income drop to -162. When I kill the RoE from the queue, then i do get money transfer, but the planet still shows never on the destroyer. If i however, click military focus and then turn it back off, then it will build the destroyer. If i focus Social, both social and mil are cut to 40 and (40) with no RoE. But if i focus Military, it shoots up to an amazing 103. None of these options change my spending amount on my planet page. But it does lower my income from -143 to -154. So I know that it is doing something. When I focus Research, I get 26 flasks, but it doesn't change either my spending on my planet's screen NOR my research spending on the research screen. I am still trying to figure this out. Please, what am I missing?

Brian

Wyndstar,

Sorry, my spacing didn't come out in the posting. It looked so good in the post window.

Brian

Hi!

Because in case of no item in mil or soc queue only the base production is displayed. Check
Production explained - how various bonuses apply thread for more details.

BR, Iztok

I looked at that kill-ratio post-victory screen and... what the?

The Terrans' Most Powerful Ship is a Space Miner. The Korx's is a Freighter. The Torians' is a Colony Ship. And the Korath's most powerful ship is a... Constructor?

Didn't these races militarize? Or did they bolt weapons on to utility ships and call them a military? And the Drengin actually scored a kill with a Freighter! This is really weird AI behavior.

The Rebel Eclipse looks awesome. I'll be using that shape in my future games.

Yes, they loaded 1 hp cargo hulls with guns. Then the gun to hp ratio made those ships "appear" the strongest in the final display. And as mentioned, I lost a ship to an attack 6 freighter the Drengin used. I don't know why the AI thinks this is a good way to design ships. They also built normal combat ships, but a normal combat ship isn't going to achieve a 6 to 1 weapon to hp ratio, so those aren't listed. Plus, those idiot cargo hulls were ambushing my constructors.

I'm glad you liked my Eclipse design. I always use it when I play with the Altarians.

That's a lousy way to calculate how powerful a ship is. I think they should add up attack, defense, and HP and then divide the total by how many logistics points that ship takes up.

The Eclipse design looks sleek and fast, which is what I want my medium hulls to look like. The Eclipse appears to use the same hull as the Altarian Resistance Flagship, but the Altarian Flagship's hull has different colored cockpit glass and lights.

However, I hate the Altarians' cargo hull designs. Apparently, with Kryo's Hull System Mod, I'll be able to use this medium hull with the Terrans, while still being able to use the normal Terran hulls for utility ships.

Also, why is it dangerous to attack armed cargo hulls with fleets?

I know it's late in the thread. But, I, too, would like to thank you for writing this up. It's food for thought.