First war ships?

Hmmm, I often wonder the same thing. With the ability to upgrade your ships, you can easily pump out some fleets of tiny ships that are quite viable at repelling average forces. Plus, the earlier you get some ships, the sooner you can do battle with them and gain exp for your ships. I remember having several instances where the older, outdated ships would out-perform my newer crews simply from experience.

I think we all tend to suffer from the (one more turn) syndrome and that includes advancing the technologies. For instance, why build a ship now, when you can have better mass drivers in a few turns, or that new engine, etc. I do the same thing when shopping in real life and it kills me every time... "Why get this device when that other one is just $20 more and does cooler stuff, but if I'm getting the one for $20 more, then why not spring for the one that's $50 more..." etc. That's where upgrading and experience helps. You have to draw the line somewhere or you'll be such a late bloomer that you'll be crushed while you're building your first ship which is a massivly hulled ship with black hole generators and zero point armor.

I hope that helps. Just pump out some cheap fighters and group them together. Think of the movies where the hardened veterans in out-dated vessles win against the hotshot kids with new sleek ships. Or where the older fleet get's a timely upgrade and turns the tide in the war. It's classic cinimatography.

I usually try to check the "Military" tab now and then in the early game. If I start to see the other races graph lines start to go up, it is time to start researching more weapons, defense, and hull techs. If you are waiting until you can build medium hulls, you are waiting far too long. If you wait that long, you will be preceived as weak and will most likely be attacked soon. The cheap and easy way to make it look like you are more powerful than you really are is to build a bunch of defensive ships and place them in orbit around your planets. (No engines and max weapons) Usually a bunch of small hulls will scare off the preadators. Keep checking that "Military" tab. If you are on top, expect the tributes to come in. If you are in the middle, the AI will probably leave you alone. However, if you are on the bottom, look out, someone will be eyeing your planets.

And to answer your question about which weapons and armor, I might sugest building a primary and secondary weapon set. If you can afford it, take the main one up fairly high (as high as you feel comfortable) and another maybe half as high just in case. The computer does use defense sometimes but it's very unlikely they will use two different kinds. Choosing two of the three weapon types will keep you a little more versitile when facing more than one opponent. I've found that even a small amount of research in a second weapon tree is not only easy (since it's always easier to research previous techs assuming you've already gone twice as far with a similar one), but it can be very helpful. With that in mind, try to build all your ships with both weapons, like drivers and missiles for instance (even if you lack a lot of tech in one, you can usually find a sweet spot where the weapon starts to take up less space, but do much more damage fairly early in the tree). Obviously don't over do it. Make sure you can afford the ships you're churning out. It's no fun to build a tiny ship with the latest tech and have it take 72 turns only to have that planet invaded in the process. Plus, you might find that quantity can overcome quality when paired with your individual ships' experience rating. There's nothing wrong with many crappy ships to take out a few expensive ones. (The Empire should have won due to their numbers, but they designed a horrible Deathstar which took up all their resources.)

As for armor: I try not to even touch it until I've come face to face with the enemy. I like to wait until I have a hostile enemy who actually poses a threat and then I send a probe ship with no weapons or defense to see which weapons they're using. If you already know, then of course try to buy a few points in the appropriate defense. I generally tend, however, to place defense modules only on larger ships (usually medium +) as they're the only ones with the HP and hull space to make it worth a darn.

Interesting ... I usually have 1 or 2 defenders on each planet and a small fleet of 3 ships for each enemy. I didn't understand about the military screen ... I've always used ships to spy on my enemies. I outfit my ships according to their mission profile. If the enemy fleets only use mass drivers then I equip a fleet that is armored, hopefully greater than or equal to their highest damage ship with 1 weapon of my best quality. The rest of my space is used for engines. For example, a black hole missle does 25 points and costs around 140 bc. For every mk3 hyper-warp engine I add I increase ship movement by 6. That gives me 6 additonal attacks at 25 points each for the price and size of a hyperwarp engine vice buying six blackhole missle weapons. When engaging a fleet I defend against their attack capability on an individual ship by ship basis. When defending (i.e. being attacked)I always face the entire fleet ... meaning I eat space dust. In my games the largest fleet I've encountered was a pirate fleet of 66 ships which I destroyed with 3 huge hulled blackhole missle boats...

By the way I like lots of battles, so my approach makes the AI attack me alot, resulting in lots of bcs spent by the AI to buildships. It bleeds them dry eventully. If I could only manage my growth better, I might actually win a game. I find I win all the battles only to lose the war...

Hi!

You need to keep them happy. The lack of your military is just one or two "minuses" in relations. If you have enough "pluses" to outweight that, you can develop your empire in peace for several more turns before you need real warships. What are your options:
- get better diplomacy they have,
- get one trade route to each AI, more only to the one you want to have as an ally,
- give away the research or econ treaty to the most dangerous AI,
- build some fake defenders (cargo hull with the cheapest one gun, missile and beam on it), and keep them in orbit all the time. They cost about 80BC, but give an attack (military score) of 6 each,
- pay wars among them, but beware: the strongest one may get too strong by "eating" others.


Early the missiles are the best: the least TP investment for an attack of 3 and 4, and the best firepower/space ratio. Defenses you chose after you see what attack type is using the one you want to eliminate the first. Just make sure you put on your single ship at least 75% defenses of the average firepower a fleet of your opponent has, and your ship will be almost indestructible (valid for DA 1.5 - 1.6 beta).

BR, Iztok

Just watch out for the cashflow pains when invading planets - first you take pop away from one of your own planets to fight and capture, then you eat the maintenance fees on the colony as you build it.

Hi!

Easily achievable by building/buying Aphrodisiacs and those two bio techs at the bottom at the tech tree. Also, if you manage to keep the approval of your planet good, you'll get bonus to the pop growth there: above 75% a 25% bonus, and at 100% the 100% bonus.


To win a war you need to take their planets, period. So don't bother with fleets, go for planets: kill defenders there and invade. Repeat enough times and you'll win the war.

BR, Iztok

It's all about perception with the AI...there are a few tricks to make them think your military score is higher than it really is, thus they will not be as prone to attack you.

The Spin Control Center helps. You can fool the AI into thinking you are stronger than you are. Put cheap low value ships in orbit around the planet containing it.

If you are not agressive, keep your high value ships in orbit when possible (i.e. no threat in the immediate area)- they get a few bonus points to thier offensive values - and thus raise your military score.

Put empty hulls in orbit around your rear area planets - they are cheap, and can raise your score. You can easily upgrade them with engines and weapons later in the game when your economy is rolling. They are also easy to change weapon/defense types as the AI adjusts to your initial weapons choices. (And they will. You will need to research/buy/steal the other lines at some point.)

Research the diplomacy line of techs ...high diplomacy will offset weak military scores to a degree.

Trade with aggresive opponents. This too will help offset a low military ranking.

Gift gift gift to really strong AI's when you have to. You cna buy them off for a while.

I usually hold off on any serious military investments to see where the AI goes first. I use a similar strategy of early research/economy focus, but I often use trade routes to persuade my neighbors not to invade.

Then again, I'm a |\|008, so this will probably fail misserably on the higher difficulty levels.

I just tried out giving the Drengin my research and Korath my economic treaty for free. That kept them happy with me long enough to start to put out enough ships to seem credible. I was pleased. I rush colonized many worlds and filled them with economic structures... when I became economically set I started to change them to their final configuration.

Since I had time to well develop military star bases before my first war, I did well with just fighters that had one attack and one defense... the starbases greatly multiplied their values and I came out on top in my 1st war. Now the second has begun and I think I will soon conquer my first opponent's homeworld.

Some good points here, although some advice I'm less sure will be helpful. Iztok and Oldstatesman gave really solid advice.

Given the current state of the game engine, I would have to advise you to NOT research two weapon trees if you are playing DA. This is a waste of resources. All weapons of the same kind add together to give you a higher attack value. There is not yet a reason to try and mix weapon values. This might change, but currently - you want every ship to have all the same weapon, especially if your ships will be operating in fleets.


The answer to this is "it depends", which is why no one can give you too straight an answer. It depends on your tech rate, what resources you have available, what resources your enemies have, how many enemies, what difficulty, how you are managing your empire, etc. etc.

A very basic "trick" if you are getting attacked early is to periodically check the military graph and see who has built militaries. Once someone has built any military, throw as many weapons as you can on a cargo hull and kick it out. They can even be paritcle beams, just so that you have *some* military rating. This requires almost no resources devoted to the tech tree. Then just leave those cargo hulls in orbit. You can do much more with this strategy with the spin control center, but that is more of an advanced tactic. I would recommend mastering the basics first.

Hope that helps.

I found that you can see what your enemies are doing once you have seen their planet, so you can see what they are building on their planet...

To find this you can get a quick overview of your colonies on top left, also look at your ships on this screen ( there is a toggle between the two). You can also look at your enemies colonies, and what they are building....both in ships and socials...this pop-up info isn't actually a screen, its like a quarter of the screen....it also tells you info on time to completion.....very useful.....

Another thing I did when starting out was actually look at their ships, and if they aren't in a fleet you have a button near the middile bottom of the screen to Info them, and you can see exactly their tech of their ship, weapons, defenses using....very useful besides just numbers to see how you're ships will do against them....I rather eyeball them and judge if I could take them before fighting.......

I found this information early in the game clue-ed me in quickly that my neighbor was building war ships and if I didn't want to be on the end of those warship's guns, I had to build my own just to keep an even footing and not be an easy target.......

On a gigantic map, distance helps alot against the enemy, you really only need to be concerned with your immediate neighbors, at least regarding immediate time frame, at least in the DA version, with 5 parsec/week rule....

also don't forget starbases, use military starbases as a means to augment your fighting force, especially if your playing defensively.....since your battle lines won't be moving forward, you'll get more benefit out of that military starbase protecting your assets.....

unfortuantely in a major offensive where your enemy isn't that tough, military starbases are less useful since your capturing their systems so fast that if you bothered building a military base it probably wouldn't be needed as the fighting keeps moving away from any built starbases........

I'm currently in my second game ever on Tough difficulty (got the game a week ago). Similar to HawkUnit, my playstyle focuses on heavy research and economy. I found the Altarians do be optimal for me.
During my first Tough game I had the same problem as HawkUnit: I started researching weapons and such way too late. Then the Korath declared war on me (Sporeships, oh I hate them). I could stall them and eventually got a peave treaty with only minimal losses.
However two turns later the Yor attacked me, and they had the strongest military of all races in that game. The Altarain racial bonus didn't help much, all too far away. So I surrendered.


Fresh start, same race, same playstyle. Only this time I forced myself to alternatively research combat and non-combat techs. I also got trade early and sent freighters to my closest neighbors. Later when I noticed my neighbors started to militarize, I already had medium hulls, some Laser IV and some miniturization. With my strong economy I then bought several ships and positioned them in strategic locations.
The only race that has declared war on me so far were the Thalans, but only because I wanted them to do so. An influence starbase in the heart of their territory works wonders
Fast forward a few turns: 500BC plus each turn, best reasearch and economy of all races, thalans succumbed and an average military rating. That's where I am now, I predict to win this game


To summarize: Like others said as well, it's important to research military techs early and to try to keep up with the military strength of the other races.

Re gifting strategies to keep the AI off your back...monitor the Foriegn Relations tab every turn. If you see an AI start to drop below a neutral attitude towards you, watch out.

I monitor what the AI is building tech wise...and if possible, research that tech first....then gift it to the AI that is starting to dislike me one or two turns before they get it themselves. I am not giving them something they would not have in a turn or so, and I usually get a temporary positive boost in their attitude towards me. It's especially important to keep close tabs on the AI's attitude in DA when you are using a gift strategy, because you can't trade with them every turn like you could in DL. I have learned not to tech whore for this reason.

- Space Militarization, Impulse Drive, and Enhanced Miniaturization (lets you build Tiny Constructors; or if you're the Yor, Basic Miniaturization is enough) are all techs with sufficient peacetime value to justify their cost. If you're an economy/research-focused empire, you should have all of these before military threats start appearing on the horizon.

- I can't really blame you for waiting until you have Medium hulls to start shipbuilding; it may in fact be the best idea the majority of the time. But for it to work, you need to start doing genuine military research not long after you see a neighbor's military rating rise. Ideally, you'll be able to at least upgrade your flagship into a useful combat vessel by the time you have to fight, even if you haven't built any new medium ships.

- As for weapon types, I recommend beam weapons if Evil (among the psyonic weapons, the Psyonic Beam has the best shot of breaking the game open), missiles otherwise (all the 55-cost missiles from Harpoon to Anti-Matter Torpedo are good deals for their research requirements).

This is long but worth it for the new peeps.

I like the Beam tree for weapons. My mile marker is Laser 3. I outfit a cargo ship with as many laser 3's as possible (I call them gun platforms) and then crank them to get 1 each on every planet. I do this by cranking up the military production rate in my economy, putting social and Research to 10-15% each.

Once I have a garrison at each planet, I go back to research and planet building. I continue to build the gun platforms but at a reduced rate.

Later in the game (after I have built better ships to garrison with I upgrade individual gun platforms to whatever useful cargo ship I need at the time, a transport here, or a miner there, and some get changed into contructor vessels.

I use small hulls (with laser 3's) for ranged weapons (meaning they get engines), built at heavy manufacturing planets focused on their production.

I don't research medium hulls until I have warp drive 3 (not hyperwarp)and the highest phasor weapon. Then I crank up my military machine again building mediums.

I liked the idea of distributing research and economic treaties with the early warfaring civilizations. That is a really good idea, I will incoroprate that into my next game. Thanks Iztok.

I send trade routes to my NEAREST neighbors to counterbalance the negative impact of close borders. Iztok also mentioned that, but not exactly what I do. I don't rely on trade for my economy, after all, eventually I will be at war with everyone, and lose all my trade money. But then, I havent mastered the trade aspect anyway, so my economy is not helped or hindered by trade much.

If you do end up in an early war, make an objective to capture a planet or two in deep in your enemy's territory, a couple of PQ 12-15's. Core detonate them to destroy the PQ and make it easier for your troops to take. Then end the war by giving the devestated planets back for a peace treaty. LOL, this way you have ended the early war and shown the Galaxy the cost of going to war with you. And your enemy loses production from those planets in a future war.

Of course, I am an evil player (game balance makes me that way, all the random popup ethical questions have the best benefits for evil choices, which is a complaint I have), destroying the quality of a planet leaves no ethical dilemna for me, especially for planets I don't care to keep (but my enemy might).

The answer to your question depends on the number of colonizable planets in the galaxy and the rate of research. During the colonization phase you want to focus on grabbing as many good planets and galactic resources as you can. Build up your economy, research, and production so that later your can out build the AI players. You only need to worry about a defensive fleet when your neighbors are arming themselves and researching planetary invasion. Ignore demands for tribute from far away players. Players with fleets but without planetary invasion are only a threat to your starbases(arm them or protect them with fleets).