get 3 caps ... radience - mothership - rapture

learn to use them: animosity -> vengance -> malice -> shield restore will decimate an AI controlled fleet

to known them is to love them.

ad 4 light frigs (AM restore abillity is win)

    6 guardians

    8 repair cruisers

    then add enough carriers to make sure you have atleast some fighter in the sky at all times ( ~10 carriers should do) just that fleet can pretty much take out any size AI fleet if you micro the abillities, I useually add 8-10 hv cruisers after that to increase the fleets dps a bit( screw illums untill you are on the offencive)

the whole screet for advent is guardians + the mother ships shield restore against tec, with max shield / AM reshearch you will be able to shrug of massiv AI fleets ( they can't figure out how to focus)

when you get on the offenciv, Illums with the guardians push abillity reshearched are fun... lots of dps with the enemy fleet not able to cloose the gap and fire. Fun times for all

hope it helps

it's pretty even tbh, but i thought i'd suggest a strat that diddent involve just spamming something. doing that makes you a sitting duck for ppl with a clue most times.

You could actually consider turtling and start to spread your culture to enemy planets. So in this scenario you sit in a fortress and spread and take over with culture. That actually works really well you should try that.

when you engage in battle remember 2 things

1- Focus fire

2- Target selection-> if there is *fleet killing* stuff around kill htat first (things like a lvl 6 marza cap ship) then kill repair/suport ships -> then take out dps

and remember phazejump inhibitors, killing of a retreating fleet and launching an ista attack should give you time to get 1 planet, rinse and repeat

and remember to play to your races strong points

shields for advent

hull/armor for tec

phaze missiles as vasari

get the tecnology for your race up and you will see a vast improvement in fleet str, also remember Antimatter reshearch is important, it is what keeps your fleet alive and dead ships dont kill stuff.(even more important if you go cap heavy)

lastly remember to get your econ up and running aswell getting tradeports up and running is mucho important, vs AI's they are my 1'st prio vs players i get them after i get the lvl 3 suport ship hori/guard/servo(i think thats the first for vasari)

tradeports are allways worth it, they pay for themself in 10min with just 2 after the longer the chain the faster the next pays for itself.

imo  flakfrigs are pretty useless untill lategame, when each side start to field 40-50squards having 4-6 will greatly improve your killraet of them

if you go with thr capship + support fleets i talked about AM regen (both the struckture and the reachearch) is very powerfull, but setup in the riht way you can live for ever against an AI

and learn the abillities of all races caps, some you need to kill some you can ignore in favor of other targets.

I thought that your allies' trade posts counted towards the longest chain?

Next game I got bold and vent 1v1 vs hard TEC economist on Maelstrom Tempest. I think I did well in the early game, I had the CPU pinned down with 2 forward planets. However the bastard must have been expanding and we ended up with a 50/50 split of the system, with me turtling heavily at 4 planets. Well, all was OK at that point but I guess I got rather complacent (again!) and just turtled for a tad too long.

The CPU started pressing on me and while my defenses seemed strong I couldn't press them back. Eventually it was attacking at 4 locations and I was even losing my capitals. The stalemate gradually grew worse, it was a huge game and 4 battles was a bit too much to manage My feeble attempt to retaliate wasn't well coordinated... at one point I managed to raze a CPU planet but had to run from the defense fleet. It seemed enemy fleets got bigger and bigger, not to mention more numerous while mine withered.

Looking at the graphs, we were almost equally matched on many counts. He had twice the fleet size, especially under "frigates" (I guess that includes cruisers too...), and twice the civilian research too. It seemed the cpu used much more flak frigates than I did, and consequently destroyed far more strikecraft.

match him fighter for foighter and you can use the rest on bombers

Oo 2x civillian reshearch, that means your econblow, start doing more.

rushing is mapdependant, and vs AI's should not really be nessesary, i really make any serius attacks in the first hour if playing multiblr hard/unfair ai's.(but i like to do all reshearch and just play araound)

may i sugest you try the map dupple gangers(med size). it is prolly the best turtle map there is vs the AI and is very well balanced and is very easy to give advice on

Next game was balance of power - this is a small map but quite a maze. My 2nd planet to colonize was a desert one in the middle, and the CPU arrived at the scene simultaneously. I withdrew while it was blasting the neutral frigates, then came back to see it had already colonized. I pressed on... and eventually I managed to kick out the CPU while it was trying to grind down my defenses at my other desert world.

I tried to push for the CPU's other planets but it didn't work, and a familiar scenario ensued with the CPU putting pressure on my planets, supposedly had 4 planets open to attack. The catch was that I had 5 planets total, including a terran one, while the CPU had 4, so even the hard TEC economist didn't manage to build overwhelming fleets. I must have pieced something together finally since I turtled and played time while the CPU desperately kept attacking, even with caps at less than half the health. It didn't end well when I got my phase inhibis up...

The rest was almost a walk in the park, except I got my fleet half-destroyed by mismanaging the attack on his homeworld, and having few defenses against the CPU's counterattack (didn't think it would have a large fleet ready to go).

I guess my attraction to carriers and bombers comes from my previous incarnation as Vaygr... in the final battles the CPU was charging with 6 flak frigs. I like it how the scales can suddenly tip when paper meets scissors in the next engagement Good that I had the sense to dock all my strike craft, the opposing fleet didn't have enough firepower otherwise to break my caps, given that my prog had been lvl 6 for long, so shield regen was readily available, too... even without a huge fleet, one gets enough antimatter metabolism to just spam a single ability non-stop. I see that could be rather useful in battle, but it takes time and many games to learn the abilities for each cap ship.

The final stages were a bit funny: I had made my front planet the capital, in an attempt to push my culture, but then the CPU destroyed it. Twice. So it didn't work that well, but when the last fleet engagement was coming to the end I was spammed by this Victory screen - his capital had fallen to my culture It seems a lot can happen even in a small game!

Lol maybe not so fast, there's still Unfair to beat too before I take the chances of turtling gazillion locust cobalt frigates.

Last 2 games have been weird, I've been playing Hard TEC Aggressor on Centrifuge - very much like the map, 19 planets with clear double ring layout, good balance between turtling and multiple avenues for attack (have to defend at least 4 planets).

First game, I was leading the CPU by 1-2 planets, thought I had it well pinned down, culture was spreading and I thought it would be a walk in the park. Then the CPU started pressing with huge fleets on 2 locations, and the fleets started getting bigger and bigger. It's a hard situation because I can't move my main fleet around all the time (there's some distance too), and static defenses on their own seem not to be up to the task of repelling a big enemy fleet. Was a bit unsure if I could even maintain a perpetual turtle scenario so I started over.

The second game, I decided to try something different. I kept my capital factory, and pushed at the asteroids. The map has a nice layout that if you get 2 asteroids past the middle, the enemy can't do any sneak attacks via the sun any more. Well, seemed that it's impossible to build the 2nd progenitor I was planning because that just takes way too much resources. Well, that hit my expansion and in addition to asteroids I didn't get any real planets, not even in my own back yard. Eventually I managed to start expansion there (carriers ftw etc), CPU was apparently colonizing the planets but at least I snatched one desert world from the CPU. It would seem I could fight back and press the CPU even though I have an initial disadvantage from the early phases. The situation seemed pretty good when I had cut the CPU's empire in half by taking the planet on the other side of the map. However the CPU again started pressing with 2 fleets at different locations, and I don't have much hope for repelling the fleets as mine are not that large...

So I'm a bit perplexed in how to beat the game here... Use culture and turtle like hell? Keep pushing research, research and research? Max out the economy? Acknowledge that defenses are only a stopgap measure and push forward with a strong main fleet? Make sure to build inhibs and completely destroy hostile attack fleets, 1 at a time and then take back any planets lost in the meanwhile?

3rd game on Centrifuge and this is just silly. I managed an almost blitzkrieg until the enemy fleets start growing.

I beat him on all resource and credit generation, maxed out focus. I have the same number of capitals, 2 more planets. Culture is maxed in research tree, sans deliverance engine. The only thing where the CPU possibly is ahead is number of frigates.

How do I counter a fleet like this?

4 x capital

23 x light carrier

5 x hv cruiser

3 x command cruiser

17 x repair cruiser

13 x light frigate

29 x LRM frigate

as soon as you have theese 3 up + guardians and some dominas you should be able to kill an AI fleet ( will take a loooong time) adding more ships will just make it go faster

p.s match him fighter squard for squard to make it much easier

well you are asking for beginer advice, it can be done way faster. But winning a game in 30min is not fun imo, but if you want just sccoutrush him

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You are playing advent, it is a *defenciv race*- But that is really seeing it wrong, unlikw the pathetic TEC and that alien scum the advent knows the value of long term.

you are playing against the map rather than the enemy AI, it's a slow but inevitable dominion over the map, deviding it into sectors and making a sector unthoucheble before moving on

in defence the battleball you need is much smaller than defence with full fleet you should have 3 defenciv and 1 stomper fleet(map dependent ofc)

thoose are the only ones that should need frequent replacement, just remember to use their AM to refuel your caps before they go down.

fixed is the word you are looking for, no worries it's still VERY good