DrAsik

Join Date 03/2005

How to win a 2vs3 ?

Last night I’ve played a 2vs3 (EDIT : on hard) and surrendered after about 2 hours. I’m wondering what I was doing wrong that led to my demise.

Here’s an overview of the situation, a few minutes before I decided all hope was lost :

http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/4885/sinsofasolarempire20090zj5.jpg

Teams : Advent (blue and green) vs TEC (yellow, orange and red). I’m blue. My ally is almost dead, with one planet left. I own a nice share of the solar system, but I am assaulted on three different fronts and have only one fleet. It takes hours to get from one end of my empire to the other, so I cannot effectively defend, much less attack. My goal is to destroy red, who is between me and my ally. But I simply don’t have time to send assaults against red. I must spend a large share of my resources rebuilding defenses over at Inari (when Yellow attacked there were 3 repair platforms, 2 hangars and about 13 turrets), which cannot be re-built as fast as they are being destroyed anyway. The rest is spent building up my main fleet, which is strong enough to send any single AI fleet fleeing, but it can’t be at three different places.

On this screenshot, my fleet is at Rentaro, having just defeated a large wave of pirates. It’s heading for Kasuga which is under siege by red. Once red flees, I’d like to capture his terran planet Maresjev, but instead, I should really try to send the fleet over at Inari before Yellow captures it. If Inari falls, I am absolutely screwed. He will then take over my home world Belgorod and I will be at a huge disadvantage, especially alone against 3 AIs, as my ally is also dead.
I cannot maintain a second fleet, at least not one that can compete with Yellow’s. Over at Belgorod, I’m gathering a few LRMs, but they can’t really achieve much by themselves.

I don’t see how I could manage my economy much better. I feel like I didn’t waste significant time colonizing new planets and have kept spending all my income on both improving my economy and my military. I have trade ports at most planets, I have started to spread culture in my farthest planets, I have developed civilian infrastructure about as much as each planet allows. Each planet has of course all the extractors it can support. My army is quite strong, but if I split it in two, both parts will get slaughtered. Just look at how many troops yellow have gathered at Inari and Pelion; I need my whole fleet to be able to destroy it.

My ally could have survived if I had destroyed red, but I’ve just been way too busy just defending against yellow and pirates and sometimes even red.

So what am I doing wrong ? I know it’s possible to destroy several AIs, so I must be doing something wrong.
And FYI, I did read https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/301605

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Out of curiosity, what level are the AIs on?

While normally it would have been a good idea to go after and eliminate red, since he is between you and your ally, the map in this case says otherwise. You have an easy choke to defend against red, while the map against your other two opponents is wide open. I would have given red a little more leeway and camped out on Pindarus. Build tons of repair bays and leave a small fleet (2-3 caps and 20-30 LRMs + some balancing units depending on what he's building). Red will probably be too afraid to attack you, and therefore go after your partner. Meanwhile, you can take your main fleet and hammer away at yellow. You should be able to build a fleet big enough to invade despite their defenses since orange will probably be attacking green and the AI doesn't keep their fleet together well. You are close enough to his homeworld that you should be able to take it out before orange has a chance to respond (especially since you did it earlier because you stopped at Pindara rather than expanding further towards red).

One more thing that you will want to do is feed your ally. He is in the same situation as you, and he's not as good. He will need a lot more resources in order to compensate for this. If he is putting up a better fight, this will help you take out yellow and keep reds pressure off of your backside.

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The game is on hard. I just added it to my original post, thanks for the question.

The support army you suggest actually represents about 50% of my main fleet, and 100-150% of my capital ships (I have only 2). If I could have that army sitting at Inari with several repair platforms, I would definitely be in better shape. I have been constantly building ships at two different planets over for the last hour, and yet with all the battles I have waged (I repelled yellow several times already) my army isn't bigger than what it is presently. I can't spare to split my forces.

Your strategy looks good, but on the other hand, getting anywhere near orange seems like a bad idea given that he owns at least 25% of the solar system and should be a lot more dangerous than yellow. Red is a much more vulnerable target and my usual rts philosophy is to always target the weakest first. Also, you can't see it on the screenshot but yellow has a few more planets up there, he won't be dead at all ifI stretch to Ginevra.

Another reason for expanding towards red was that Rentaro and Maisica were still freely available and are rather easy to defend. They give me a nice cash income.

I'm not trying to prove I played right (I obviously didn't since I lost), but to get a better understanding of my weaknesses. My theory is that I'm simply too slow and tend to lose too many ships in battle, although I don't know how to improve much. I'll definitely retry a similar game and report my progress.

Any additional input is welcome.

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I just won my first 2vs3. I saved on game start, tried it once, got owned, learned from my mistakes, re-loaded and won. It was still a fairly close call with pirates constantly harassing one my worlds, but I spammed beam turrets like crazy and it was effective, letting my fleet concentrate on one AI at a time.

Once I get 10 carriers I can win most battles fairly easily. The AI seems to underestimate their power. 3 squads per carrier ! + a lot of illums, of course.

I never even had to reserach subjugators and heavy cruisers. Could have used them, but then I had about 25 carriers (= 75 figthers) + 65 illums which was unstoppable for the AI.

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Well done, Doctor.

I tend to underestimate the usefulness of beam turrets (because real people can just stay out of their range until the battle is won) but I forget how useful they are against AI, even just as a deterrant.

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2v3's are still do able. but as i have said the days of 3v7's are damn near impossible unless at least 4 of them literally just installed.

the trick is in micro'n ur feeds and u both rushing. when i say micro ur feeds i mean whoever gets hit first or attacks first instantly needs 500/100/100 to get a heads up on ship building. ill use this as a for instance. 1 of u is advent the other is vasari on a small map 2v3. u spawn next to each other or apart it doesnt matter the starts are the same, scuttle cap yards and build the labs u need and RUSH. skip jump if u have too. needless to say if they are good players and can feed properly u will probably never win, but in case they dont...

if the advent player goes illums immediately dump him money while ur cap is building and kanraks researching, this will get his 3 labs up and illums researched fast enough for a great rush. dont do this if u have an enemy 3 jumps away or less but then if u do, u guys prob lost. feed the teammate who is closest to another player enough that they can get a decent scout rush (4-7) to rush in and kill builders, have them follow up with the lrf spam skip jumping as i said if u have too. if u do it right the builders will die before enuf labs get up for tec or advent and no amount of feed will save him. his cap is now ur focus, let him spam lf's if he wants ur lrf's with ur initial team feed will handle it, take out the colo cap before he can run and whatever u do NOT let a marza get away from u, 2v2 with 1 marza free will wreck u. kill the cap, take the frig factory and send ur cap to take their roid, remember to kill the builders as they spawm immediately becuz if they get labs up a feed will save their hw especially if they researched emer fac.

while 1 tm is doing this the other needs to lrf rush the other with the same tactic to ensure only 1 can get a feed or help if u messed up and let a cap or builder live.

this is the important part tho... MICRO feed.

meaing u rush a guys hw with 9 kanraks and he has 7 kanraks, now would be a good time to heavily feed this person even if u are fighting too, it will make him gain the upper hand faster and then he can in turn feed u when u need a momentary boost. if u do this right the game will be a 2v1 very quickly with the other 2 hw's alive but empty, leave 4 lrfs on each hw and then 2v1 the final guy, who will no doubt be getting a pretty good fleet of carriers and maybe heavy by then. dont think that a 2v1 guarantees victory here, all either of u will have is lrfs and 1 colo cap each.

now is a VERY good time for 1 of u to spam carriers and whoever is further away go eco and start feeding. once the main fight between the final guy who will have a much better fleet/eco/ and colo than u is under way stop the eco spam, build some lrfs n bombers and hit him from behind, keep feeding ur ally tho so he can get the minimum of 5 repair bays and 2 factories on the planet he makes the def line at. dig in and u will win, if he gets past one of u and goes to ur hw... let him, it will spread out his reinforcements and leave his planets as easy pickings, finish his worlds and then hunt his cap/carrier/hc/lrf spam down recolonizing ur lost worlds as u go.

hope this helps iv done it myself at least a hundred times with raknor, tyr, or gini.

-bronze

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3vs7 is indeed very hard.

I've only got 2 enemies left to destroy at my game. The hardest part is that if you do not ally with somebody else, you'll be having a hard time. I experienced this in the beginning, when their larger fleets threatened mine, but luckely I had enough defenses to scare them off. I always hide in the background, and when two AI's take on each other, I use the opportunity to go into their system, and take my share of the cake. When my ally's weak, I declare war and destroy him to get a cease fire with a stronger opponent. In the mid game I then created three big fleets to be able to fight on three fronts and although I did not had the largest culture spread or resources, their fleets were always outnumbered. In mig-game I started rushing all my three fleets against one opponent (attacking from three different angles), while still having tiny fleets defending my planes. The AI really goes nuts when you atack it from three positions, and the battle is yours easily. Afterwards I attacked the AI one by one, while having cease fire with their rivals, and when the time's right, I declare war at those empires too.

I'd say your biggest problem was having only one large fleet, I'd always have at least two fleets to attack him from different angles.

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Bronze: Hes talking about computers. Last one I did was with tyr and how. It was 3v7 unfair comps. We won.

3v7 against humans is hard. If there are noobs its easier. if the 7 have some skills, then very hard.

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I assume you don't have entrenchment, so things are gonna be a bit iffy. When I scout, I look for key chokepoints. Now, if you have a decent economy, it should eb relatively easy to get another cap and a few carriers or heavy hitters. If you took these guys to the pirate base, you would do two things: knock out the pesky raiders, and create a great chokepoint. This gives you one jump to either orange or red, and quick access to your ally. Indeed, you could have jumped past red's ice world left of the pirate base, through the asteroid field, and taken down the red desert planet to give him some breathing room.

As for yellow, in entrenchment Ogiria is mighty fine. A fleet with a SB there can pick off half of a fleet before it even reaches your worlds. But since that's not the case, look at the two yellow asteroids: Orestes and Faera. Faera is too close tothe enemy, and doesn't provide quick access to Pelion. So, we'll go for the next best thing: Orestes. This gives a quick jump to Faera, and if the enemy jumps to Orestes, you jump to Faera. The AI will be discouraged, and jump back. If it doesn't, you should have a smallish fleet to defend Pelion while the main fleet takes Faera. Once Faera is taken, you can turtle there.

As you can see, I love to first pick a few good chokepoints and follow up with an encircling of the enemy. If you can encircle red, effectively, you can quickly overwhelm his borders with smaller fleets and destroy his economy. And when green falls, you now have a perfect two-world front against orange in Eriepa and Mitaka. In other words, you have a long front that is easily jumped through in Mitaka, Eriepa, Orestes, and Faera, with preferrably a roaming fleet/SB in Ogiria.

Hope this helped.

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