Strategies for suicidal skill level

i also cant win on suicidal, i merely win on maochistic but pretty much own on crippling, theres a large gap beetween genius nad incredible

Yeah, the new changes to the AI have made the incredible AI insane. I really think they need to rework how much bonuses the AI gets for the last three difficulty levels now more than ever. Like Masochistic AI will get 150% bonuses, Obsene AI will get 175% bonuses, and Suicidal AI will get 200% bonuses like normal. I mean, this pattern just seems so natural to me (especially since genius is at 125%), I keep having to wonder why the heck Masochistic and Suicial AI are exactly the same. Is this really that hard to do? It makes so little sense the way it works now. Of course, it would be even nicer if they just uncouple the economic bonuses/penalities from the AI routines all together, and let us adjust it as we please (using a slider for the AI's economic level), but I suppose that would be hard to report in the metaverse.

Thoughts? Surrender.

I cant even get past normal becasue on every game theres one race that owns the others and it comes to be me and like one more to fight them off with little affect. On one game a AI and I had a military score of 200-300 and the other AI had 980. i made peace with them and the othe went to war. After awile they then come after me.

Chin up, soldier. I too thought I'd never make it to normal, but now I'm doing Tough. So keep practicing and refine your strategys. You'll get there.

ICE, I suggest YOU be the race that owns all the others!... Seriously, its been stated many times before that humans are vastly superior to the AI when it comes to the combat aspect of the game! The biggest thing is to not fall behind tech wise. If you keep up to date on tech and dont wreck your economy then you will be in good shape!

As for the higher levels, I dunno, I suggest staying up on tech and keeping a strong military... Other than that, play to your strengths!

I dont knowabout that. I routenly win against Civs with fleets that are greater then mine in normal and intellegent.

See i looked at the bonuses and some races get a bonus in everything Yor have a 100 bonus in loyelty!!!!! and becasue I am not a good ship maker I can never make cool ships.I get to a point that tech victory is the only way due to the fact Im on the lowest in military str. i sometimes have more tech than the AI becasue I buy anything they have that I dont. I forget what I give them but for like when they come to me saying someone is strong and they need help I give them the first 10 techs I have so they will leave me alone.
I game one race all my techs becaue they whre losing and I had 27 techs more than them andthey still lost. When The AI gets alot of cash they use it and I mean use it!! I lost oen game becasue they had tons of fleets with 128 mass guns and a 100 def in what I was using and came at me one at a time. When I got one planet left they left a fleet next to it to kill any ships I bought becasue they where sending a troop trasnport.

Well, dunno about the newest beta, but one of the most important things (imho) on suicidal is not to have a low military score.

Yes, we all know that the military score says nothing about your real ability in battle, but the AI will declare war on you if you're lower then them in this score and the one thing you don't want to happen in a suicidal game is to have war declared on you.

This sounds easier then it is, since the AI is able to mass large fleets in a short time thanks to the bonuses it gets. Here I've found the spin control center quite usefull. What's also important is to try to conquer at least one race early into the game without any losses in ships. I.e. a fast and deadly attack at all it's worlds before it has time to build an army itself or to prevent your troop transports from invading. This is nescessary because on this difficulty you probably will lose the colony race and have to make up for this.

During the game you should also try to never have a war that is going on longer then about 5 turns. If it gets longer, sue for peace if possibly and try again later. Reason for this is, that when you fight on this difficulty the other races are able to replace their losses quite quickly while you will not only need more time to do so, but you also don't want any significant loss because this will mean a drop in the military score which is just an invitation for other races to also declare war on you.

If you declare war you must conquer a significant amount of their planets in the first turn of the war. Fighting war doesn't mean destroying ships, fighting war means conquering planets.

Also, if you're able to bribe an other race into going war with somebody else, do it, no matter the costs. Having lots of wars where you're not involved is the best thing that can happen to you.

Use economic bases as often as you can. Remember, half of the bonus is for free. Don't build military bases later into the game. They are easily destroyed and you could build more useful economic bases instead. If you have a positive cashflow with 100% spending, you have not build enough factories and/or research buildings. Try to get your money through trade and tech selling if you've allowed tech trading (I usually play with tech trading turned off, much more fun imho.)

Advanced strategies depend heavily on the size of the galaxy, the number of AIs, how many good planets are available, etc.

On small maps, try to conquer as many enemies as fast as possible before the ones left gang up on you (and they will gang up on you, sooner or later, but unfortunately mostly sooner ).

On large maps try to expand peacefully after your first conquest, try forming an alliance for your attacks, but abandon it as soon as someone declares war on your ally.

Also if you have set the anomalies on abundant, try to build some survey ships very early, those 2500 credits finds can help you quite a lot.

Well, most of this is quite a bit cheesy, but imho if the AI gets bonuses, I'm not too proud to use cheese tactics to show them that those bonuses are still not enough.

Nice good info.