I believe it. But I have no Battleships, not one. In fact, the fights against the Kaek are with my older designs (advanced designs now under construction) Here is some info, My largest ships are Cruisers, they sport (don't laugh), Heavy lasers, Nuke MIRV missiles (single bank) a bomb rack and a pd laser... with a class three shield and 2nd level armour. The battle at Acriu was against ships hat were more technologically advanced (on paper), but poorly laid out. I expect an absolute slaughter once my advanced designs are available in number.
Well, heavy lasers with good miniaturization are quite effective, and the same goes for missiles. Yes, the game could be so beautiful. Not getting a battleship is by your choice, I guess. You could easily research the tech and build one. Anyway, how did you end up as a mod on this board?
Especially with some HE3 augmenting the power of the beams Yes, I don't need them yet so why bother, besides I prefer using small task forces, 1-2 FF, 1DD, led by a CA. It's almost the same SSP cost as a Battleship, but far more flexible and deadly if you configure the ships to be complimentary to one another. Sent you a p.m. so I don't put our readers to sleep
That's another flaw of the AI. If it sees that it cannot win a battle it should at least go after the weaker ships, inflict some damage, and then retreat to cause attrition. This is also a good raiding tactic. But all the AI did against my fleets was to focus its fire on the biggest well defended ship. That's the main reason why we don't suffer any losses at all.
Agreed, you basically use a heavy ship as a tank to soak up the damage while your smaller ships run havoc… but it’s more than that unfortunately, read on and you will see. On turn 203 the Kaek counterattacked at 4 systems total with the following results. I destroyed 1 Frigate at Jers, and aCruiser at Sulaka, while chasing away one Cruiser at Terra and another at Yaihex. Good to see the counterattack hit all four targets at the same time, but that is a result of their drive tech more than anything else, these forces were too weak to do anything other than slightly keep me off balance and force me to leave some forces behind. On the following turn, I raised their outpost at Khepri, it was essential to start eliminating their forward bases. On turn 205 I suffered my only defeat. I had kept a Frigate and a Destroyer at Kepri when two enemy Titans arrived… I withdrew. However, on the same turn I did manage to destroy an enemy outpost at Grivutis and force the Kaek Cruiser to flee. Turn 106 First I attacked at Koykin, destroyed another enemy Battleship and a Cruiser, and razed Koykin IV. The real action however was when those two Titans from Khepri attacked me at Yaihex. The results are below and illustrate why I don’t feel the need to produce heavy ships. Mind you, this is after Titans, which already were double the size of a Battleship, received a buff in 1.04. Can you imagine what I would do If I designed one or two of my own? And so, the strategic situation now is this
Not really. I mostly play a bit during and after dinner. Very slowly sometimes, while enjoying my food. That's one of the great things about TBS for me. This just wouldn't work in multiplayer, at least not without my opponents getting really annoyed. But there are different types of multiplayer that haven't been explored yet. Something that is asynchronous like our AARs but still melded into the game.
A quick update It's a bit slow going as Koyukon has many developed colonies in the system, but that will just delay me, not stop me. The action so far... 207 Captured asteroid outpost at Koyokun and chased off two Cruisers 208 Destroyed a Battleship at Sulakia, destroyed a Destroyer and chased off 3 Cruisers at Koyukon, bombarded Koykun 2 209 Destroyed a Destroyer at Khepri, Destroyed a Battlestation and Cruiser at Koyukon, bombarded Koykun 1 210 Destroyed 2 Cruisers at Koyukon, bombed Koukun1, chased off a Cruiser at Hodorth The funny thing is with all the losses the enemy has taken, (I should have kept count), they still dwarf my fleet. Other information My own forces at Koyukon consist of 1CA, 2DD, and 2 FF. Of those ships, only a single Destroyer is of the advanced design. In two battles so far, the enemy did target my Frigates as well as my Cruiser but to no effect, had they concentrated on taking out the Frigates, they would have destroyed them and reduced the number of missiles I was firing at them.
It's a gotten a bit worse than that. Those pesky Lemurians, who are allied with the bugs, attacked me yesterday. All my enemies combined now outnumber me four to one. They have also switched over to mass production of warships so there is a slight chance I can simply be overwhelmed. Last night I also encountered some Kaek Designs with Class VIII shields and good weaponry, so perhaps it will be a different ending than I anticipated.
The AI could definitely use some help with military strategy and tactics. It normally doesn't affect me because I play 4x's as a pacifist focused on building the perfect empire, seeing how quickly I can complete the tech and culture trees, etc. The AI really does a passable job at empire building--especially when you give them custom races with major bonuses to research, etc.--but for the wiki I declared war just to get information about combat, then just skipped turns to complete all the techs. The AI kept sending single ships against my star bases and dying in auto-combat. Just a stack of doom strategy and they probably could have taken a colony since I was offering no defense. At the very least it shouldn't initiate battles it has a 0% chance of winning. @Quantomas, I've never seen any 4x AI that was remotely a challenge without massive cheats even to empire building, but especially in tactical combat (2x damage given, 1/2 damage taken kind of stuff). You seem to believe it is possible for an AI to challenge a player in a 4x without massive cheats. Is there a game where you've seen that? If so I'd like to try it out.
You're preaching to choir, I agree I agree here too This depends, the Ai gets better at war once it reaches critical mass, In my case, they are raiding constantly and making solid attempts to strike targets... I'm just able to counter them no matter what they do. Both main factions I am at war with (the third is weak), now have huge fleets and are easily replacing their losses, I have to fend off multiple attacks every turn and conduct my own offensives, This means that my forces are spread out, if they were to concentrate, I too would concentrate in response. The way they conduct their operations could be better but isn't the main problem. The main problem is the way they design their ships and the tactics they use in battle. I'll be honest, I was about to give this session up, but it just got challenging, so I want to ride it out some more and see what they can do. The Kaek and Lemurians are number 1 and 2 respectively... I am perhaps 6th...
There is a bit of a fluid border what constitutes a strategy game and a 4X game. With that said, you can try out Heroes of Might & Magic III. It is definitely combat- and exploration-centric. You don't build bases, but these are all in fixed locations and you have to capture these. Research is typically limited to spells and hero skills. The AI makes the game interesting, strategically and tactically, without cheats. Plus there is an abundance of high quality handcrafted content with the community still active twenty years later. Some maps catering to the warmonger, others to the explorer. Heroes III Complete still is regularly in the top-10 bestsellers at GOG for a price that gives you spectacular value for your money. Try it with the HD and HotA mods and you are in for a treat. You could also check out Heroes V with the Heroes 5.5 mod. I like its battles better because it has an initiative system that makes for many intricate subtleties. It also allows for fairly asymmetric gameplay, for example Necromancer, Barbarians and Haven play quite differently. And of course there is MoO2. On the hardest difficulty it is a serious challenge for me and whether I win depends on the map. Just make sure that you don't build fleets bigger than 20 ships, normally a fleet of ten is already fairly good. You don't need bigger fleets even for conquering the Antarans or capturing Orion. Conversely bigger fleets just make the game sloggish and dilute the gameplay. I have never seen credible evidence that the AI would cheat. I noted what @Konstantine said about spying, but in my games I always monitored the situation closely. As I am a player who likes to gain an edge in tech and guard it, I'd get pretty annoyed if the Darlok would steal my tech. So I invested heavily in counterespionage and when the Darlok sent something like 50 spies I would counter it with 70 spies. Realizing that they couldn't penetrate my counterespionage they would simply retreat (so an unexperienced player would think they don't do anything) to target another empire, but they would be back with more a few turns later. As you can monitor the tech of your rivals I definitely would have noted if something fishy was going on. There is also no need for the MoO2 AI to cheat as on the harder difficulties the AI races get a few more race pick points. As the race picks for MoO2 are excellently balanced and powerful, e.g. subterranean gives you bigger planets everywhere, the advantage snowballs with a competent AI. If you never tried it out, it is still a revelation today.
My idea behind giving you a map with properly optimized races was that you at least can test out whether they can challenge you if they massively outnumber you. But you can easily employ my leader boost strategy or, if all things fail, consider building a battleship. And if worse comes to worse, you can simply retreat to your home system and build it into a powerhouse and strike back once you are ready. Naturally this strategy needs to be prepared a bit in advance. If you still run into trouble, mind you I doubt that, please take a hold of your current save and I will give it a go to turn things around. But this is only the last resort if you actually lose the game.
Seriously though, that is not about to happen. This empire will not be defeated by a bunch of misfits and aliens. I have five main fleets spread throughout the map, each is commanded by a leader, and I am able to deal with any major threat with just one of these fleets. I can also detach units to deal with minor raids. Unlike the AI, I use fleets, not one or two big ships. As a result, I am far more flexible and can deal with threats much easier, conversely, I can threaten much more effectively should I choose that course. My ships are 80% older designs, I am basically doing all of this with just my HW and I cannot pull units from all over the map to refit, so my few new designs serve alongside the older ones. Battleship construction will begin soon anyway, five total to serve as flagships for my various commands. Before doing that however, I want some advanced Frigates and Destroyers to spread out among my forces. I have one if you want it for your enjoyment... but you may find my approach... strange. Defeat is possible, but I can always switch over to a more sophisticated approach if things start getting hard, I've got plenty of tricks up my sleeve.
You can try Pandora: Eclipse of Nashira (since it is DLC you need also the base game, the DLC is must because it has the AI improvements). Out of the 4x I tried I think this has the best AI. Note - Hard difficulty is on even grounds (Normal you get bonuses, because people complained it is too hard). Once you know mechanics you should play on "very hard" where AI gets some bonuses (like production, research etc.) but not big. In this game AI does not role-play, it plays for win. This is also why many people did not like it so much because in some sense it feels more like multiplayer than singleplayer (e.g. if you are weak others will all gang on you). Homam3 is very good game, but I don't really think AI is great. It is basically about doomstack and all you need is logistic & pathfinding and perhaps some teleport spells (townportal is easy to get). The key is to be fast and then you win easily. But on hardest diff. early game is like puzzle, one wrong move and you can lose. MoO2, while better than ISG, was not as glorious as people remember. AI was able to keep up bit longer, but mid-later game it also completely failed to make any usable ship designs. Somewhere around zortium armor AI designs started to be grossly ineffective. To get some challenge I sometimes played only using torpedoes or pulsars etc. But going with beams + ship attack it was total massacre there as well. Lot also depended on racial picks. Take Tolerant and even Impossible is easy. Play with all negative picks (for max. -10) and even Hard was sometimes challenging, but only early-mid game.
Before I continue with this, I think I need to qualify a few things. To anyone following this aar, it may look as I’m having a very easy time against the AI, and the perception may be that it’s quite horrid. It isn’t. First, I need to point out that I’m a veteran strategy gamer, since the days of cardboard maps, counters and Avalon hill, since before a lot of you were born, Adam included. I can also rightfully claim that on this planet, no one has more hours with ISG than I do. Once the AI factions reach a certain stage, they do in fact become quite potent. Their war time operations are not perfect, but they are not bad either. So why is it so easy for me? Because apart from those two facts I mentioned above, I am winning battles I have no right to win. Tonight you will see the results of another battle where the AI did meet me with very adequate forces, had those ships been even slightly better configured, I would have lost the battle and my experience would not have been enough to save me. So let us continue then, the first thing to note is that I’m no longer outnumbered 4 to one, the odds are back down significantly now. Turn 211 I destroyed a Kaek Cruiser at Koyukon and razed Koyukon 1 Turn 212 I destroyed a Kaek Cruiser and a Destroyer at Koyukon and Razed Koyukon 2 Turn 213 I chased off a Kaek Cruiser at Zrops, destroyed the Kaek Battlestation at Koyukon 5 and bombed the planet Turn 214 I destroyed a Kaek Titan at Acriu, chased away a Kaek Cruiser at Sulaka, destroyed a Kaek Frigate and Destroyer at Koyukon and bombed the fifth planet again Turn 215, the evil Lemurians, (allied with the Kaek), declared war and I chased away a raiding Frigate of theirs at Jers. I destroyed another Kaek Cruiser at Koukon and occupied the fifth planet. One of my own Colony ships arrived at the system and I resettled Koyukon 1 which is a terran ultra-rich world. I reassigned governor Squeeg to the system. As you can see the Lemurians have targeted several of my systems, however their drive technology is poor and I have plenty of time to meet up with them. Still, in my fury, I decided to bring war to their doorstep first Turn 216 I destroyed three Lemurian outposts, one each at Yeokt, Rohini and Peu respectively, I did this by sending small detachments from my main fleets as I knew they could not defend these systems in time. I also destroyed another Kaek Cruiser at Koyukon and occupied the fourth planet there, giving me full control of the system. There was also a major battle where I defeated the Kaek at Clebbaof and razed the colony there. This is a battle that I would have lost if the Kaek ships were a little better
To hijack this AAR just a bit more since @Konstantine seems to be identifying areas of the AI like ship design and fleet composition that could be improved with tweaks, so an AI discussion isn't completely irrelevant. I certainly don't have your expertise with game AI, but a few comments anyway: Maybe we have a different definition of AI cheats. To me, extra starting picks *is* a cheat. What I'm talking about is things like bonuses to production, research, maybe ship attack and defense, etc.--all things available on the race customization screen. You've already given Konstantine more of a challenge with just legal but optimized races. Combine that with better ship models and fleet composition and he might have a real challenge--barring strategies like you suggest that you can just choose not to do because they aren't fun. I haven't played MoO2, though I plan to now, but I was reading the official manual just to get ideas since so many of the mechanics are similar, and right at the top it does say Maybe the mechanics of how that is done is through the extra race picks you mentioned, but whatever the source, that is the kind of "cheat" I meant. The "they all hate you right from the start" is also significant--had the AI been inclined to attack him earlier and with multiple empires at once, forcing him to expend early resources on defense rather than empire building, that also would have increased the challenge. Another easy way of increasing difficulty is barbarian hordes (pirates in space game terms) that appear from time to time as events and tend to focus on the player--a few hand-crafted fleets suddenly appearing behind your lines scaled with turn number can cause havoc on your plans and is a feature of many 4x games.
Technically, yes. But giving your rivals another random trait (from the race picks) is by far the most elegant solution a 4X game has done so far in order to implement difficulty. Better is only an AI that is simply superior to you and scales back at lower difficulties. Anyway, the most important thing for me is that an AI plays according to the rules, starting advantages that I can select are fair in my book. It's a bit like the maps in HoMM3, the rules are identic, but some positions are better than others. The reason for this to work for me is that all my tools to assess strategical and tactical situations work as they should. It doesn't matter why a rival has an advantage. But if they could cheat by slanting the rules to their favor the game would be slanted as well. There is a difference between race picks that are a natural part of the game and, let's say, the boni Civ V gives to computer empires depending on difficulty. Ganging up on impossible difficulty isn't what I experienced. It's more like the repulsive trait in ISG. Anyway, the impossible difficulty on MoO2 isn't really the way to measure the game. It is quite good at normal and hard difficulty. If I remember correctly normal is without additional race pick points, hard gives the AI already one additional valuable trait and impossible two. If you are good at 4X strategy try MoO2 on hard, otherwise choose normal. Keep in mind to keep your fleets moderate, 10 - 20 ships max, and you will experience a fair competition.
That is major problem though. I've only 1 game so far on Hard diff. I did not touch AI's until turn ~190, so they were not hindered by me. Yet even this late they all used titanium armor (except 1 with tungsten), most had no shields or class 1,2. One empire migrated to class 3. Their attack/defence rating was around 100 (very small). Many were still using nuclear drive. The most powerful was Sulak still with titanium armor, nuclear drive, and at least no shields started to migrate to class 4/5 around turn 180. More resources will not help if AI does not use them. I've sent the save game to Adam and hope this will be somehow improved. AI might not be strategic/tactical genius, but if it builds strong ships then it can put up some resistance/challenge even with current state. Yours AAR is interesting and I think it points to the very same issue (even AI titans can't stand up against cruiser).
