Daemon Jax: Describe how you use Military Star bases

Use Tiny hulled ships with a single point in offense and a single point in defense. Use atleast 9 constructors to build a military starbase that gives offensive and defensive bonuses to your fleets, and make sure that the area of effect includes the planets you want to take. Have your troop transports ready.

Note: Don't bother invading worlds until you have shock troops. Always use "4000" soldiers when your enemy has 6000+ population on that world. You can get away with even numbers for less. Use the mini-soldiers option. You win.


The trick is to not have war declared on you, but to be able to operate in peace until you choose to decimate your opponents one by one. The best way to do this is to have the #1 military always -- not hard to do, just start making very cheap ships when the Drengin or Yor start making them. If you don't have the tech at that point, trade for it. They don't manufacture very fast... +50% military production helps here (which trumps the research bonus in 1.1b). But this entire strategy (being ranked as having the #1 military force, and using military starbases with Tiny hull fleets, and tech trading) just overwhelms the AI so it's not even fun to play for me anymore

I'd like to see:

1) military starbases need to be nerfed. There's currently 0 incentive to research weapons, armor, or larger hulls. Tiny 1/1 ships own everything.
2) the AIs need to make alliances and gang up on the #1 military power
3) relations of neutral and below should have serious penalties to trade deals
4) AIs should attack when you move a military force into their space unless you have an Alliance
5) no more of this "I declare war" and then 10 turns later I finally see the AI mount an offensive. They should have their forces staged at your border ready to go before declaring war.
6) It should cost much more per race when you bribe the AI to attack said race, i.e. it doesn't cost much more to have the AI attack one opponent than four opponents. They should not want to fight even a 2 front war.

@ WTF Chuck : Paragraphs are our friends....use them if you want anyone to read your long posts.

Anyone here know a way to get around these exploits and win in a honorable, fair fashion?

I'd suggest you check out the version 1.1 beta. I haven't grabbed it yet myself, so I can't speak from my own experience, but I know one of the biggest changes in it is the option to disable tech trading. Right now, as you observed, the only way to stay in the game is to tech trade like a madman (because that's what the AI's doing, and if you don't participate, you're just crippling yourself, regardless of how dirty it might make you feel). In 1.1, though, you can turn off the tech trading so it's purely up to each individual civ to get its own research on. Might make for a "cleaner" (for lack of a better word) game for ya.

That's BS, you don't need to exploit the AI like that to stay in the game. I persoanly never even open the diplomacy window because it's so damn easy to abuse the poor AI and I still have no trouble still beating down the computer.

Someone's still playing on Beginner!

You wish. I just finished totally wiping the floor with the computer on Painful with out bothering to trade one peace of tech but what the computer would periodically pop up with.

Let's see some Metaverse scores to back that up. Maybe it can be done as you say, but everyone else I've seen commenting on the boards will wholeheartedly agree that tech trading is absolutely vital. It's easy to say that you're doing it how you're doing it, but without being able to see your games up on the Metaverse, how are we to believe that you're not playing on Beginner and just talking yourself up?

Your (sic) probably just not very good at the game.

That may very well be. I haven't played beyond normal (which you can check in the couple of Metaverse games I've got posted), but I haven't lost a game yet at that level with tech trading. Regardless of my skill, as mentioned above, I've seen plenty of folks on the board (with plenty of medals attesting to their skill and experience) who endorse tech trading as a very important strategy.

I mean just try my suggestion of giving the computer an empty planet then using a single transport to capture it thus gaining free tech (about 50% of the time) and you'll he'll order all the advanced building upgrades you might not have had. That too is very powerful, but it's so obviously abusing the computer's stupidity that it should be considered cheating.

That one, I'll grant you, is cheap, and you're right... I do consider that cheating. But I don't feel the same about tech trading. As far as I'm concerned, if the AI is doing it, we've got every right to do it right back. You don't see the AI dumping planets and re-capturing 'em for free techs/upgrades (at least, I've never seen it ), so that tactic is out the window.

I'm gonna give your strategy above a shot in my next game (still in the midst of a Normal/Large Influence-fest with tech-trading-goodness at the moment ). Now, I'll probably end up screwing the pooch on it myself, but I suppose it does sound like it would work, assuming I can get everything hammered out quickly enough at the beginning. Just to clarify, it sounds like you skip the whole colony-rush at the beginning and just go straight into military mode to wipe out the neighbor? That's really something I hadn't thought of before... I was always too eager to get my grubby mitts on some nice tasty planets and build up from there...

By the way, sorry if I came off harsh before, I really was just being silly with the initial "Someone's on Beginner" crack

That's far to much. Just take a cargo hull, fill it with sensors and place them at strategic points, cheap and effective.

My point was that Eyes of the Universe puts scanner 15's on all your ships...anything with at least 1 scanner on it. That's why it's so effective...it allows you to use anything to scout with..and constant surveilance of the AI races because your freighters turn into the perfect spy ships.

Well you shouldn't totally skip the rush
It's just a matter of what you focus after you've grabed all the planets. I go for a quick military victory.

Isn't the game boring as all hell without tech trading? I mean... it's the only thing stopping me from blindly hitting end turn until either A) my tech finishes researching, my ship(s) get to their destination, or C) my ship gets built. Atleast with tech trading it gives me something to do. If I don't stay ontop of the AI's technological achievements, then I miss out on an opportunity to make some cash. So that means I need to check what techs they have very frequently.

Non stop war?
After I've dispactced one AI I usely will declare on the next one with in a few turns (once my ships are in postion)