Fighting a vastly superior enemy

Hi!

1) Ally with them and get the alliance victory.

2) Keep doing what you already do: conquer everyone else to get enough planets to fight Humans at the end, while researching the biggest hull and proper defenses for their weapons, and weapons they don't have proper defenses for. When there's no planets to conquer, build several attack ships and hit their mining space stations first: mil should be top priority, then econ and morale ones. If you can, immediatelay build over those "free-ed" resources your own stations. Hit his planets next (the best way is you do that in the same turn you started the war), and hit them HARD - for immense galaxy you should have at any give time 50-100 fully loaded troop transports active, and take 5-10 planets of his per turn, 50+ at the start of the war. This way you'll weaken him seriously, so he should not be able to respond properly.

You can also use some cheap tricks from mil starbases. The nastiest one is many overlapping speed-decrease SBs, covered by lots of single tiny 1-weapon hulls. Since his fleets will move only at the speed of 1, they'll destroy only one of such ships per turn, but your underlaying SB will remain intact. Just keep sending those tiny ships to the SB(s) and this will go forever, keeping tied lots of his ships away from your real targets.

BR,  Iztok

Dear

Hello 

Tip: This has happen to me, I build a star base they go out of there way to come to destroy it where ever it is. So with that in mind build up my forces.  I didn't attack becuase they would just be wipe out.  My M rank 50  to thier M rank 250, I thought I was going to loose big time. This how I won I played mouse and cat not hit and run. I only lost  4 planets in the game becuase he too interested destroying my Military star bases all over the immense sized galaxy . I built a base to lure them off from where my forces were and then on the other side of immense sized galaxy I built another star base. While I was doing this I researched missile weopons and missile defence and huge which is my Battleships. Then I made a no engine battlship called BB-Moon-Jp 60% Offence and 40% Defence. Damage was over 400 and defence was 120. And then slowly took over, I mean really slow as a snail on a football field. I forgot to tell you, at the begining of the game a mega event made all ships move at 5 pc/wk even with stellar engines.  It took 20 years to win but I did it.  I hope this helped a little.

Order of the Bloody Rose of Orders Militant of Adepta Sororitas

Saint Mina of Opelia VII

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“We are at war with forces too terrible to comprehend. We cannot afford mercy for any of its victims too weak to take the correct course. Mercy destroys us; it weakens us and saps our resolve. Put aside all such thought. They are not worthy of Inquisitors in the service of Our Emperor. Praise his name for in our resolve we only reflect his purpose of will.”

Inquisitor Enoch,

Castigations on the Last Days

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Another tip is to get other races to fight eachother. Anyone not at war with the Terrans should be paid to do so. Also, keep in mind that no matter how over matched you are at the start of a war, you aren't losing unless you lose planets. If you manage tio take some of the AI planets, you are winning even if your ships are being destroyed.

I never look at the military rating to determine where i stand. I always have fewer ships and a much lower rating at the beginning. But my ships have on-type defences and a good enough balance to survive battles. Or at least fleet make ups where the better ships survive and the fodder doesn't. Remember too that the AI always leaves a great part of their military on their planets to defend. You can have a fraction of their rating and still be able to fly freely through their space. Just get the roaming fleets first.

I take on vastly superior enemies on Suicidal all the time.  It's probably the most satisfying part of the game for me.  There are so many tricks you can do vs. a dumb AI, he has to runaway quite a bit ahead for you to lose.  There's espionage (you really need to get Medium on him), guerrilla warfare (as in fast, low-attack ships that raid his traders, asteroids, undefended starbases, transports, etc.), luring his fleets off-course, the "let him take your crap planets then retake them" trick from the Dread Lords campaign, letting him build all the ships he wants and choke on the maintenance, and military starbases.   IMO, the latter is mandatory.  Dollar-for-dollar, I can take out fleets costing many times more than what I lose using military SB's. 

Sometimes he's so strong, you can't even take out his orbiters.   No big deal:  just build constructors, make them part of your invasion fleets.  Build a miltary SB over there, use the assist to attack the orbiters.  Invade.  Tech-steal something good, use your shiny new SB to defend against counterattack.

So to take on a vastly superior enemy, I say just attack him.  If you're lucky, you may be able to bribe him into attacking some other races first...THEN you attack him.   Make him fight on three fronts.   I find it's pretty hard to bribe anybody to attack the strongest guy in the game, but you most certainly can bribe the strong guy to attack the weak ones.  Once I take out the strongest guy first, I know I've pretty much got the game won.

Nasty? Mabye sweet. Very clever, either way.

I'd more or less second everything in replies 1-4, with emphasis on the theme of keeping your most powerful enemy as distracted as possible. Depending on the details of your map, it can even be worthwhile to get them at war with a minor civ. The enemy might gain a major planet in the short term, but they'll use resources to do it, free any recource nodes that the minor owned, and leave a rich, soft target for you and/or the other AIs.

great replies everyone.  

Constructors - is it really a viable strat?  I would think building ships instead of the constructors would be more beneficial.  How often do you guys do this?  

Is this one of our important tools that I havent been using?

I can't see having any game without constructors. At the very least you'd want / need to get the resouces mined.

But even without the resources I still build starbases in every game. Usually its just economic starbases for the +24 bonus to production and research. I like to play with tight clusters so that i can get the most planets inside of a economic starbase's ring. When its safe in the area I'll have at least one starbase at each cluster in my empire; occassionally 2. Not every single planet will be boosted however.

So think about your research capital planet that can have a few +24% starbases adding to it. It can be a good thing for ship production too. They are worth the time to construct instead of fighting ships since they take a lot less time to complete and the boost to the planet will mean future fighting ships will be done faster. When your military ships get big and expensive, most planets that have only like 4 or so idustrial centers won't be produsing military ships very often, but in something like 2 - 4 weeks you can have a constructor. High production planets will sometimes take single week to make one, before going back to fighting ship production.

I don't usually build military or influence starbases. Military bases can be good for the speed modules but for me fighting never takes place in an area enough to warrant building one; it would just be destroyed anyway. Influence starbases will be built in a specific circusatnce. Like and AI planent that i really want that a starbases would help flip.

It's an important tool everyone is not using.   I think it's because most people just don't get in the position of fighting someone far ahead of them in the first place.  It's probably a combination of difficulty level, and probably a lot of diplomatic shake-and-bake.

The trick with constructors is, they ARE ships.  Think of those military assist modules as weapons.  You normally spend 25bc for 1 point of attack--only to get it blown up if the ship dies.  With a military SB, you're spending 95bc per constructor, times X constructors, it gets multiplied by every ship using it, and it does NOT die--the ships do.  If you get only +1 attack on a fleet of just 4 ships, you already come out ahead.  And if you're fighting a defensive battle, lots of ships getting thrown at you, you're going to get a lot more than that.  While he's losing his big 435bc Battle Cruisers, you're losing 85bc Tiny hulls.  The reason I say "constructors" and not "starbases" is, you can wait till the last minute to build the SB, so as to guarantee it will be used at least once.   Constructors move; SB's don't.  You can even move it into the stronger guy's territory, and use it to take out his orbiters. 

Oh!  That reminds me of another dumb AI exploit you can use:  take out his orbiters, over and over again.   If the Dread Lords were hovering their ships over your planets, what would you do?  Not build defenders, right?  Why complete it only to get it blown away the next turn?  Not so with the AI--he'll just crank away defender after defender.  While he's spinning his wheels building targets for you to shoot, you can pull even in research.  If he's so far ahead in research that even his defenders are too strong, put down a military SB there.  What's he going to do--send in fleets and counterattack?  That's precisely what you want.   I think the AI is rush-buying his defenders--it seems like every other turn he rebuilds one.  So if you can interdict just a few of his planets, you can put a drag on the dumb giant's entire economy.

I'm curious, exactly what does this do? I couldn't find the 'working search' page that Stardock has somewhere in cyberspace instead of on their website. I had a game where this event occured to the Drath occured also, on an immense map, at first I was like 'oh shoot, better destroy the Drath', but never did attack them until very near end game. I couldn't tell a difference whatsoever with their power level, they seemed to just 'go along' as any other civ. Militarily they were already one of the most powerful, but I never noticed any extreme power gains or anything.

There's a Telenanth "random" event, and there's a Telenanth "mega event".  The random event is something like a 1% racial bonus to each (most?) of their stats per turn; I don't remember what the mega one is (perhaps 5%?).  If it's the former and you ended it within 2 years, you probably wouldn't have noticed a major difference.  If it was the latter, they should have at least been pumping out more and stronger ships, perhaps making more money, but it doesn't really make them play any differently either way.

I had one game back in DA 1.7.something where the Torians got it and had their bonuses in the 700-800% range by the time I got around to conquering them, but as I had colonized around their worlds and basically locked them in, they weren't much of a threat.

Yea, it happened probably a little under 2 years before the game ended. The way the desciption made it sound, it sounded as if they were going to become the so powerful, no one would be capable of stopping them. I must have had the random event.

This happened to me with the Yor recently in an immense galaxy. they own about 10-15 planets and they are holding there own in a war against the Thalans, who must own somewhere between 100-150 planets. Their research is the second strongest in the galaxy on average and their military is 3rd/4th. the event happened about 4 years ago and they easily have the smallest territory. the event has made what should be the weakest race into one of the most powerful!! they're my ally though so i don't have to worry about them

so if the random telenath event gives 1% to most stats as Sole mentioned, that means the Yor should have by now over 200% mentioned in most of their abiliteis! Hey, in your game check to see under the Yor abilities if they have alot of abilites that are that high, Because with their normal bonuses they should probably have some sky high ones hitting close to 400% by now. (sorry, my post is not quite coherent, it's 2am here and i'm half-dead tired)

Another trick you can use is the fleet module aggro strat.

Normally if you put defense on a ship, the computer targets the ships in your fleet that have big weapons. However, fleet modules paint a big red bullzeye on your ship, so that even if it has a lot of defense, its normally attacked first.

Start researching a lot of defense techs, then build a big ship with just a few attack, a lot of defense, and a fleet module. Combine it with ships that are armed to the teeth with weapons. In combat, the terrans will waste their time attack your might armor, while your weapons tear them to pieces.

I kill much stronger opponents regularly with this. Its gotten so easy I just recommend a change to teh devs:)

Another point to consider is that military rating is not an accurate picture of how much power they can pring to bear on you.  The computer ties a lot of its power up defending planets, which means that if you leave most planets undefended and group all your ships into fleets, you can often project more actual power into the conflict.  I've had games were the AI had a bigger military rating but I had the only fleets actually in space.  Their total combat power was concentrated on planets and I defeated them in detail.

        A more accurate rating would be based on the strongest 2 or 3 fleets.  When the computer has a fleet or a ship that I can't stop, then I am impressed.  At higher levels, you can't afford to have a decent defense on every planet.  Eyes of the Universe is very helpful here.  Watch out for very fast, armed transport fleets, particularly from the Terrans.  (in my last game, their transports were armed and had a speed of 14 - very hard to defend against)  Of course, ultimately, you want these kind of challenges.  It keeps the game fresh.