How Do You Beat A Huge Map?

Have you guys ever beat a huge map? It's taking forever, and I'm so frustrated that I just can not continue playing it. It's just too painful. My fleet is just big enough to cover my empire, and my empire is only like half of a star. The minute you choose to go after one empire, three others come in through warps and attack the planets that your attack fleet used to cover. AI fleets just jump in from stars, warps, everywhere they can and just lay waste to my planets, forcing to pull back. And the minute I pull back they all jump away, Phase inhibitors don't do jack against them.

The thing is, there is no choke points on huge maps with a decent sized empire. You can't choke out warps and stars, and the defensive system is just too weak to handle decent sized AI fleets. The frequent siege frigate fleets that AI is so fond of using is just impossible to push back without your fleet, and these siege fleets just get bigger and bigger. I tried diplomacy so I can focus on one enemy, but it's very difficult to maintain any alliance for a long period of time because the crazy demands, such as one ally asking you to attack another ally. Not to mention sometimes alliances are broken for no apparent reason, and then five minutes later I get a huge attack fleet on my doorstep. The only thing left is mass superweapons, which still takes freaking forever.

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Research is crucial when breaking a stalemate. Get the culture spread bonuses, insurrection, and the novalith (or comparable superweapon) and things will swing your way. There's probably a better/faster way to go about it but that works for me.

And yes, maxed out planetary defenses must be able to defend against spam seige fleets. The gauss platforms need at least a 50% range increase in my opinion.

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My opinion, is that defenses needs to be beefed up, almost double the range and strength. THe actual hitpoints is ok, needs more damaging punch for the platforms and fighters.

Essentially we have a unit cap, and we can not have the fleet spread thin across the empire, otherwise we cant go on the offense and only do a half assed defense. Just like the situation, the O.P. is in.

I agree, on the huge maps, it is almost impossible to win unless in a team.

Culture is ok... but the culture advantage/assimulation is basically broken when there are wormholes or unihabited systems seperating the planets/asteroids.

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I just started playing a huge map as the vasari and its looking like theres only one way to win this. Basically what im doing is gaining momentum. It seems that once you lose that momentum you may lose the war. Im also attempting to make sure that i can keep an alliance with one race while annihilating the other. I would have to say also that you need to be willing to give up a few planets in the process and perhaps just leaving enough ships behind to slow an advance. Look also at maybe trying to as the ones before said to just build some superweapons but dont bother targeting the world you'll be invading. Also try and hit your enemies infastructure) trade centers and mining facilities. If he cant build replacement ships he'll die off. Until i reach the point youre at then otherwise i can say nothing with any positivity.

Oh yeah ive got 7 other enemies but most of us are spread out. I need to look at getting to another star now. Crap.

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i play on large random maps there are always choke points you just need to expand enough plus if you do it right set half on one team half on an other will sort out your starting problems and if you get a system with no wormholes and have it completly station a mid sized fleet at the sun so unless they launch a very large offensve youll be fine but there will be parts where you feel as if youll lose loads of planets and you probaly will lose a system before you compltly concour it. plus theres allways the option to lock teams but i think that makes it a bit too easy.

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I have found it is very important to fulfil the other players missions, especially early on. If they are ignored, you WILL lose, as they will 'gang up' on you, and no matter how well developed your research is, it will do no good with 2 whole fleets bearing down on your planet in a pincer movement.

I now start the game very slowly, building up the military and civic researches, and agreeing to pay the other teams requests for crystal, metal, money, even if it leaves me out of pocket - this will pay dividends in the long run. I seem to be able to get peace treaties with every faction, this is when the money starts rolling in, and you can develop both the plants and fleets. I then see who has the worst popular rating, and wait until another faction asks me to destroy structures/ships, which I do, then soon after, offer a ceasfire again. As I build up everything to the max, the other factions are fighting it out amongst themselves, when they are weaker, that is the time to pounce, as they're in the same situation as you regarding the fleet sizes. I will keep the fleet at a colonised planet until the defenses are maxed out, and leave a couple of Kodiac (if playing as TEC) cruisers there to help out the hanger defense fighters.

This game is quite incredible!

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Huge maps? They are BORING. I suggest my map It seems huge, but it is actually pretty easy once you get the hang of the strategy. Basically you take one star system after anotehr going clockwise or coutnerclockwise. There are no warps and all enemies will jump through the star, so you know where they will come from.

And you try to get as good relations as you can with all the other races. This is not hard if you research the techs for diplomacy as Advent. Not entirely sure if Vasari and TEC have the same equivelent of techs int heir trees.

But at the same time build up ton of defenses at your boardering planets (All those connected to the stars). Those will help you beat back kamikazie runs made by the siege fleets the AI loves so much.

I'm doing a game now and I'm about 5 hours into it, I save and contniue. I have taken 5 systems so far, only 15 to go.

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I play Tec on huge maps. After colonizing about 1/3rd of your home star. You start getting mass attcked by practically every other player on the map.(usually) The trick with Tec is to beef up your economy to the point where money and resources become irrelavant(I usually end up with 50odd creds/sec 6-10 metal and 4-8 crystal(map dependant) no matter how high my upkeep gets.

Every time you increase fleet capacity, you must and I say again MUST upgrade your economy. Either by upgrading infrastructure on a few planets, build more tradeports and refineries. The way Tec defend their planets is by getting the civilian unit hull upgrade(if you want to do this during a fight) building 3-7 frigate factories at border worlds and creating insta fleets when an enemy attacks. I even go as far as scuttling some units when they are to far away from the fight and just rebuilding them.

having 7 kodiaks appear every 20 seconds is devastating to the enemy morale and those ships can then push the border back as soon as the enemy retreats. By the time they become spacejunk(4-5min later) They will be replaced by another freshly baked batch right from the oven

Oh and this works on SP/MP - take a small fast fleet and go reaserch centre hunting. It is crippling when done at the right time.

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