Hot posts in thread: Conquest aar. 1.03

Very well, this is a setting I struggle with more often than not. I will start it tonight, just give me a couple of days, (if you can) before releasing 1.04

Honestly, even the severe/Emperor can give me trouble from time to time...this should be quite interesting.

 

Is that a challenge Grand Admiral Solo?

 

Great read, thanks.

 

Stick a fork in them, they're done.

here I am at war with everyone save the Bugs. I've visited mass destruction indiscriminately and also Captured Nova Prime.

The AIs have tried to counterattack, but my forces are too advanced and numerous for that to do anything more than slow me down a bit.

I'm freezing this save and calling it quits, I'll ramp up the difficulty to maximum allowed and play one for fun now.

 

I attacked the Sulak at Igiabdit a few turns later. My forces consisted of 4 Destroyers, 1 Cruiser and 1 Battleship, (16 SSP) against 2 Frigates, 3 Cruisers and 4 Battleships (34 SSP)… I destroyed the enemy fleet while suffering no losses save for a captured Frigate.


This instantly dropped the Sulak behind the Nova in the rankings as I have damaged their military significantly while also taking their colony. My own position was obviously strengthened further.

With several choices in front of me, I have opted to mass forces at Eanope and will strike more AIs soon. I already feel confident enough to fight 3-4 of them at once… let’s see how it goes.

 

Leeku has fallen and the Moltar remnant is now inconsequential, a good bonus is that I now have a second tech capitol for my empire. I’ve started setting down warp interdictors on my colonies and I’m researching Tachyon drive. Once I have that drive in my possession, it will be over for the AIs, as I will be able to be far more flexible with my fleet deployments.

My support ships have remained scattered and I no longer have any intention of moving them, I may even scrap them to gain the extra SSPs.

The military situation is excellent. My fleet consists mostly of highly advanced Destroyers that can easily defeat any AI Cruiser one on one, I also have a small number of Cruisers and a single Battleship. The plan now is to attack the Sulak and possibly the Draguul and Nova as well, that worm hole at Eanope gives me quite a lot of strategic options.

All else is also excellent, I have a healthy economy, have solidified my tech lead as number one, and I have the largest military with plenty of SSP to grow it further.

In summary, I consider this session already won, but I will continue on to the “formal” victory just to prove the point that the AI does not cheat, even at the hardest settings. After all, every action available to the AI is also available to the player, and it was by combining AI behavior with my own play style that I was able to produce the result shown thus far.

 

The inconsistency of the races is very consistent!
I play all of them on the huge, sometimes I use my custom race against the other six (gets crowded quickly) and here is what I see.
The Sulak and Nova usually take the lead, but not exclusively. I've seen the Moltar do it as well as the rest of them. It is partially dependent on what worlds are nearby them and on their own cultural choices which are variable game by game.
Don't be surprised at anything... and don't come to expect the same behavior from them

Combat... that is an entirely different matter, they are very predictable there and you can slaughter them once you understand their behavior... unless you fall too far behind in military tech of course.

 

Cheers for the headsup, I'll try that. What's interesting is I played the same difficulty and Medium map with the Moltor only and they barely grew the entire game. In this one I'm playing on Huge map with them and also the Draguul and this time the Moltor have taken 75% of the map.

 

Ok my friend, that setting is probably more crucial than the AI difficulty you choose. To put it in plain terms, the normal setting is viceroy, that means normal space around you. The Emperor setting usually puts you in the slum of the galaxy and can mean that you go the entire game relying on your homeworld only.
My suggestion is to leave it on the viceroy setting until you master the difficulty levels. Once you accomplish that, you can go back and try the same settings with yourself on Emperor... it will be quite the challenge and add tremendously to the replay value of the game

 

I'll have to check but I think it's just the average one, forgot what it got renamed to recently.

 

Your experience level now leads me to believe you are ready for hard.
May I ask about your own settings, Viceroy or Emperor? It makes a huge difference.

 

Thanks, just playing on average and didn't have much battle experience (I spent a lot of time learning the other stuff first). I'm taking out the weaker of the two AI now and seems fairly easy. So maybe I over estimated the AI on this difficulty. Once I finish this game will try again on a higher one.

 

Hit them early if you can and keep them off balance... this holds true IRL too. Don't leave the AI to set up it's own check-mate, disrupt them, they are excellent at growing their way to victory if you leave them alone long enough...eventually the stronger AIs start absorbing the weaker ones and you can fall too far behind.

If you play hard or above, my suggestion is to get a credible fleet together quickly, strike first, and strike hard...(like the schoolyard my friend, find the biggest AI near you, and knock it out).

Edit

Yes you can skirmish with them, border wars are just fine. I had one where I fought the entire conflict with just 4 Destroyers only.

 

The main reason I avoided them was the SSP but might try pushing that a bit. Just like with the first 50 turns it seems sometimes it's good to ride your capabilities to the edge to get things going.

One thing I have also avoided is going to war until I had a sizable set of fleets. It sounds like we can get away with more skirmishes early on. I let the AI grow pretty big in my current game to avoid an early war I couldn't get out of but maybe I was being too cautious.

 

Just be careful, by doing this, they are committing a lot of SSPs to support ships... which is why even when they have a commanding lead, I still have a stronger fleet. Add to that my focus on military tech, and their "cheating" isn't enough. Take a look below.

My new designs have been under production for a while now and my older ships have been upgraded… with one exception. I’ve scrapped my Frigates and retired the design permanently. Frigates simply don’t have enough space for the later game, so my smallest ship is now the Destroyer.

The trick of course is to make sure you have enough SSPs to do this, in my case, that is not an issue.

I struck at the Moltar first at Lithios and beat back a counterattack of theirs as well. My invasion force is just a single Cruiser escorted by two Destroyers… but they sliced through the Moltar Cruisers easily enough.

There was no particular reason for attacking them other than gaining Lithios and expanding my logistical range further.

I am now solidly in the lead with the number 1 position, highest tech and Fleet, I am gathering forces for additional offensives, possibly on multiple fronts and also have The Moltar HW in range, it will fall… but not tonight, I need a break from this

 

So that's how they 'cheat' Will have to try that out to try and speed things up on my end. I wasn't sure if there was a diminishing return. Putting a stack and then moving on makes a lot of sense.

I wondered what all that fleet activity of the AI was, must be part of it. They are constantly shuttling stuff in and out and I felt I must be missing something as I wasn't doing the same.