Tell me how you dominate

I think 2-3 factories (quick buying the first one) are really the optimum choice for having the colony be able to build everything quickly.

Also, you don't set your taxes to zero, just low enough that the world's that are still growing are at 100%. After your colony ship production is more or less out of the way the home planet will grow back to max fairly quickly and it can fall below 100, as an example. With those bonuses you should be able to keep a 30%+ tax rate and if you hold off buying farms until you get more trade centres built then keeping 3-5 billion people is quite easy and you can often have your tax rate closer to 40 or so. You shouldn't need a happiness structure to start.

So, a couple factories, and trade centres, then maybe a farm and a happiness at the end. Why do you build a starport? It can't build anything without 5 or more factories and only takes away from social spending on that planet if it even tries.

Even at your best it will take time to pass the computers players in tech/industry on suicidal.

Okay, first I make sure I have enough leather cuffs/bracelets as well as some decently made ball gags, cheap ones won't do here... oh, you meant dominate in the game... my bad...

Well, you may have already read this, but I gave some real basic pre 1.5x patch advice in Conquering Suicidal and I gave an in depth gameplay example in my Altarian Rebellion AAR.

That by no means covers everything, but should give you a good starting point.

Hope that helps.

There are a lot of different ways of winning on Suicidal. A significant part of it depends on game size and your game style. An even bigger part is just having the right sense of pacing for when to switch from one goal to another. You are always riding the edge of what you can do without cliffing over into destruction. Wyndstar has a good AAR for smaller maps and Suicidal. Given all that, I am very comfortable that I can always beat the AI on Suicidal barring very unusual circumstances. Here is what I would suggest:

1) Don't play on Huge or Gig maps while you are working up the difficulty level. You usually need a few iterations to get things down.

2) Read the various recommendations for starting strategies. I personally only buy factories on the first two planets, always lay down factory(s) (1-3) and starport to start every colony and I put a high priority on survey ships. All factory strategy.

3) Figure out what you think the best starting abilities are.

4) Play a couple of games where you only play out the first six months to a year. Use these games to improve your colony rush until you start to feel like you are approaching the optimal colony rush...I actually had never done this before DA, but DA changed the colony rush enough that I needed to adapt my game a touch. Two or three games like this made a big difference. It will also let you winnow down the answers 1 and 2 provide to something that works for you.

5) Work up the difficulty gradually. Don't start on Suicidal.

6) You will be over matched in almost all areas, so figure out AI weak points and hammer them. If you simply copy the AI, you will lose. It has too big of bonuses. However, learn what it does do, and if it's better than you copy those things...

7) Game feel (aka the plan). It will be different, but have a general set of goals that you want to accomplish and then be flexible about them. A typical run for me is:

Phase 1 - Natural growth
Acquire "enough" planets to build up a sufficient structure to do research and build ships.
Subgoals:
Grow population and focus on morale and economic techs
Build survey ships
Colonize
Get Galactic resources
Avoid techs that I don't need to build my planets.

Phase 2 - Avoidance
Upgrade factories and galactic resources so I have a very solid production base.
Get other AIs into wars with each other via bribery(renew wars when they make peace)
Avoid war
Push up into basic military tech, but build very few ships. By under spending on military, I get a chance to close up the gap in some other areas that offer immediate ROI (return on investment)

Phase 3 - First war
Start building current warships and transports (They will have ROI now).
Pick a neighbor who is colonizing into my territory (meaning undefended planets). This should be a militarily weak neighbor with a minor tech advantage.
Pay him or others to get into a war(s).
Once his forces have started a shift to the front and I have some transports built, start the war. The tech gap should significantly close;I should obtain his current weapons tech and other planetary colonization techs.
By regularly taking his planets, he should never be able to pull away from you technically.
Make peace when he has one planet left.
If played right, I can usually get to this stage before the AI is properly armed and able to defend itself.

Phase 4 - Even footing
Phase 3 should have placed you somewhere in the neighborhood of the same strength, industry, etc. as some of the AI players. Pick on you weakest neighbor.
The rest is clean up.

It is very important to study how the AI plays and work on his weaknesses. One of the best ways is by managing your ships better. It's also a good example of studying the AI. The AI plays a combination of zone defense and one-on-one offense. By this, I means AI warships fall into one of three categories.

1) Planetary defenders. These guys just stay in orbit.
2) Zone defenders. These ships guard a specific area and they will not attack your ships, even when you are at war, unless you enter their area of defense.
3) One on one attackers. The AI sends either individual ships or fleets towards your planets. They operate independently of planetary defense. Usually they will chase transports first and then either go after warships or planetary defenders. If you have any undefended planets, they will send all of their transports in a "second wave" behind the first wave of attackers.

So when fighting the AI, if you can get the attackers and transports headed to another AI, you don't have to fight them. You only have to address the new attackers as they are built. Alternatively, you can make an estimate of the strength of his attack forces. You only need enough military to handle them immediately, plus enough for one zone (See below). The rest are defenders....Also, once you exhaust this first rush, the AI will have relatively few transports coming at you. Since I make an initial war plan to deal with attackers, I never have any planetary defenses, except occasionally ships on my side playing zone defense when taking on an AI so big that I need to narrow the conflict.

On the offense, I send sufficient forces to overwhelm the zone defense and planetary defenders for one specific area. I don't plan on taking them all on at the same time (except later in the game)but only tackle the AI on a zone by zone basis. Once you move into an AI held zone, it will become aggressive about trying to knock you back out.

Also the AI is often slack about moving his rally point. If the rally point is close to you, park a fleet(s) on top of it...And fight his ships one at a time, instead of in fleets.


This is really only a small piece of it, but hopefully it will make my approach on how to do it a little clearer and make it a little easier for you.

I agree with and commend Purge for all of his advice in the above post. I would really like to highlight this point though. For 95% of my games, they are won or lost in the first year. Get that first year down, and the rest is cake (relatively speaking).

My last suicide game was DL 1.2 on a gigantic everything abundant map with 475 planets. The colony rush lasted 18 months with me grabbing 11% and the 9 AI sharing 89%. More importantly I grabbed at least a third of the galactic resources! I was able to fund the expansion with my taxes low (for 100% morale) and keep pace with the AI research wise by aggressive tech trading and grabbing anomalies with my fast survey ships. Shortly after the colony rush I took out the weakest nearby AI. The AI never declared war on me except when it saw my forces in its territory but then it was all over usually within a month. I did not need to get them to fight each other. In fact the game was mostly peaceful except for my wars. One by one I took the AIs out.

p.s. I've never tried all factories or all labs (seems to go against the spirit of the game).

I'm playing my first DA (1.6b2) game on suicide (6 AIs all ultimate) on a crowded medium map (stars common, planets occasional). I'm in the bottom right corner with the Altarians to my left, the Torians above them, and the Drath above them. To the left of the Altarians is the Drengin, above them is the Korath, and above them is the Thalans. At game start I only purchased a basic factory on a pre-cursor mine saving the rest of my money to fund my deficit economy. I have tech trading disabled so I can't exploit that and so far I'm finding I can't exploit the anomalies either (one gave me 250BC and another 100BC but where are those ones netting 2500BC!?). I'll need to find other sources of revenue until I research enough of the government, morale, and economic techs to have the population, stock exchanges, and tax rate to support my production. I never bothered with trade on my past games (except during the GalCiv II pre-release beta) because it goes away when I make war with the AI and never amounted to much. I may try it in this game. It's June 1st and I need more money to keep my speeding at 100% past the end of Sept.
The colony rush ended quickly with me grabbing 3 regular planets for a total of 4 and my neighbors the Altarians and Torians each grabbing 2 regular and 1 extreme radiation for a total of 4. I did not have a chance to research this tech before the AI and each of these planets is beside an asteroid field. I also grabbed a military and influence resource. My population is a close 2nd behind the Torians (super breeders) and my social is 2nd behind the Thalans (hive). Everything else I'm far behind especially my economy because my taxes are low.
In my past games I always played neutral but I thought I would try evil this time. The MCC will help with my economy and the evil weapons will work nice with my first strike advantage and +2 speed bonus. Once I get my economy under control I need to pick my first victim. I don't dare attack the Altarians first because then I will be fighting the Torians and Drath as well. There is a minor with a morale resource but both are in Drengin space near its border with the Korath. Its only June 1st but the Korath and Drengin already have a large military, with ~440 and ~210 respectfully (posting from memory). If the Korath and Drengin would only declare war on the Altarians then the Torians and Drath would have to come to their aid. The Drath might also convince the Thalans to join them. I could then take out the minor and grab its morale resource. Then my next victim would be the Torians (the Altarians and Drath likely wouldn't come to their aid if they are already at war with the Korath and/or Drengin). Thoughts?

One quickie.

Anomaly cash has been nerfed. Still worthwhile, but not the rich source it used to be...

I'm not sure if you can bribe people to start wars with tech trading off, but it's cheap if you still have that function.

Edit: The war bribery mostly came into it's own with DA.

Purge, those are some great tips! Thank you. I humbly suggest your post would be worthwhile in its own thread so more people will see it.

One thing I would like you to expand on, if you don't mind. "Avoid war" sounds good on paper (well, on the monitor), but my opponents often take that choice away from me, especially on the higher levels. I've tried focusing research on Diplomacy tech, as suggested elsewhere by Wyndstar (whose posts I also mine heavily for good tips) but that seems to have little effect; the AIs still hate me... they just take a little bit longer doing something about it. Even the small amount of time I save by going diplo, that time could have been invested in some kind of defense against the attacks I know will come.

As it stands, I can beat the game at Tough fairly easily now, but any Painful game is, well, painful. It appears I have a low pain threshold.

Ironically, unlike many people who post here, I seem to have no problem with Economics in the game; my econo-planets are works of art, and provide me with a good income each turn. Sadly, that income always ends up being lunch money for the mean kids in the neighbourhood.

Hi!

If you don't have any military, you'll soon be targeted. However current AI looks ONLY at the military score, not on your existing ships, so you can use that in your advantage with fake defenders: a cargo hull with cheapest attack-1 gun, missile and beam weapon, that stays in orbit all the time, so its attack value shows 6 points. Having some is often enough to get rid of the second minus for low military in foreign relations. If you have one trade route to each neighbour, and if you give your research or econ treaty to the biggest and closest bully, is that often enough to get you another half a year of relatively peacefull development.

BR, Iztok

Thanks, Itzok... I'll give those a try.

With DA I have also been conducting an experiment with another way of staying out of wars. It consists of:

1) Getting survey ships out fast. My current game I had well over a dozen of them out there on a gig map. They alone picked up enough +1% bonuses to diplomacy to give me a diplomatic advantage. combined with the Xeno Ethics tree and the early government types this gave me a substantial advantage.

2) Pay any reasonable blackmail, weighting slightly by the threat that particular AI poses.

3) Make sure your biggest threat gets your research treaty. Do this early. This alone pretty much guarantees that this one AI will not bother you.

4) If an AI comes to you asking for help, always give it something. 1BC or your least valued tech is just fine...

5) When expanding, try to look for natural borders. The fewer areas that have heavy influence overlap the better.

6) Bribe AIs into wars with each other early. Rotate who they are at war with when they make peace. This adds permanent negatives to their relationships and totally takes the focus off you. This also tends to arrest their colonization efforts. Also, barring a super ability, I have never seen the AI start a new war while it is already at war. I have seen other AIs attack one, but never do they start them spontaneously.

That last one is critical. In my current game (4 AIs/gig/abundant all), instead of doing basic build up when the AI started to get some military ships built, I instead did a round of bribing people into wars. Every time a war ended, I check the treaty situation and relative military strengths. I then bought a new war that would move the AIs closer to parity with each other (by double and triple teaming the strongest AI). By the time I was buying wars for the second time, it would only cost me ~2K or two/three cheap techs to buy a war, and my weekly income was 10-20K. I put emphasis on getting AI's of the same alliance (good, evil, neutral) to war with each other. If they get to close in their relationship with each other, you can't buy a same alliance war, but once they get that permanent negative for historical hostility, it will be open for the rest of the game. This worked very well, a full six months to a year after the first AI ship was built, I had no (yes zero!) military ships and my worst relationship was neutral. I was actually warm with the AI that had my research treaty. All AIs were at war with each other. I believe I could have continued this indefinitely. When I did start building ships, I tossed up an SCC and modern warships. I went from zero military to three to four times the military rating of the best AI in a month...Mostly because I had a very good comparative infrastructure. This is also part of the reason why I was comfortable doing this. I knew I could deploy an insta-military and all bordering AIs still had ~half their planets without defenders and slow moving (3-5) ships. In this case, game over before the first war...

There are more things I do to make my score high...But for winning this works.

Edit: This is with a race that had no special diplomatic abilities, super or otherwise.

Second Edit: I tried this in my current game, because I found it very effective in a previous game where multiple AIs hated me. I was able to fight every war on my own terms and on my own timing, despite being universally hated through this methodology.

Aw, c'mon Stormbringer, you know those things are only props. It's all in your attitude. And your wrist too, of course; attitude and technique are key.

Uh, in the game, of course - I'm talking about, um, strategy and, uh, tactics...



Spore. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfrakker in the galaxy. Accept no substitutes.

How can that be when the difference between Tough and Painful is so small?! Switching from Crippling to Masochistic is too large of a change!

Currently we have:
Intelligent - The AI's economy is run at 100% of normal; AI expertly picks abilities and all known human tactics are searched and countered
Gifted - The AI's economy is run at 105% of normal; all AI algorithms in place (same as above)
Genius - The AI's economy is run at 125% of normal; all AI algorithms in place (same as above)
Incredible - The AI's economy, production, and research are run at 200% of normal and it gets a ~20% bonus to miniaturization; all AI algorithms are in place (same as above)

Where I would have done the following:
Intelligent - The AI's economy is run at 100% of normal; AI expertly picks abilities and all known human tactics are searched and countered
Gifted - The AI's economy, production, and research are run at 125% of normal and it gets a ~5% bonus to miniaturization; all AI algorithms are in place (same as above)
Genius - The AI's economy, production, and research are run at 150% of normal and it gets a ~10% bonus to miniaturization; all AI algorithms are in place (same as above)
Incredible - The AI's economy, production, and research are run at 200% of normal and it gets a ~20% bonus to miniaturization; all AI algorithms are in place (same as above)

p.s. I bet the Drath could learn from Purge!

Who me? I'm just an innocent little bunny rabbit. He's the bad guy ---> (insert AI here)

Mascrinthus,

I think the AI gets bonuses on all categories at the higher levels as well from some previous stuff I have seen from the devs. I.E. Diplomacy, Influence, etc.

This is all rule of thumb.

Since I am using an all factory strategy...I ignore the entire research tree to start with. I also ignore all the military techs (offense, defense, logistics, hulls, planetary invasion/defense) as I only need them when I start contemplating ships. I ignore all influence techs. Since I am playing Gig/Adundant all, I also ignore all the planetary colonization techs, as there are plenty of regular planets around. Also, note that you can invade a planet you do not have tech for...You will still receive taxes and population growth on the planet, after you take it, even if you don't have the tech - meaning I never research the planetary environment techs - ever. You just can't do social builds until you get the appropriate planetary environment tech.

Phase 1:
Production - Morale - Economy - Colonization
I, in particular, want the first couple of engine techs that add +1 to speed, the first econ tech (+10% without building a single building) and morale tech (+15% without building a single building - huge!!!), planetary improvements, basic miniaturization (for colony ships), sensors and to get to enhanced factories fairly quickly (rolls into phase 2). Don't feel compelled to fill every planetary square. I rarely do until phase 3 or 4.

Phase 2:
Production - Morale - Economy - Galactic Resources
Manufacturing centers, star federation. Full Xeno Ethics line (want MCC and ASC minimum). Some basic military techs (often obtainable via trade with minors). Develop a couple of morale and/or economic resources, or get some empire wide morale buildings built. Recently this has been sufficient to carry me to Stock Exchanges without building any earlier economic buildings (super breeders + all max economic stat on racial points + federalists + some morale + very fast research). Without super breeders you will need economic buildings though. Somewhere around phase 2.5 newly colonized planets should be about break even on economics.

Phase 3:
Production - Morale - Economy - Warships
Basically I have people, starports, some galactic wonders, and manufacturing centers...I get to total majesty about the same time I build the first ships (also build up a massive manufacturing planet next to the SCC planet and hopefully a third planet with decent production for quick buying ships for the SCC planet occasionally). I can usually push through medium ships to large ships, some of the miniaturization and about half the missile tech tree, before my planetary ship builds start really kicking out ships. Save logistics until you actually have enough ships to fleet. Start on transports once the warships start to come out. They should take a fraction of the time to build and you really want the fleets (really mini-fleets, sometimes singleton over-powered large ships) and transports to come online at the same time. The manufacturing base accelerates the research at this point...I start laying down Stock Exchanges somewhere in here too.

Wyndstar:

Your strategy for suicidal is amazing. I thought I had to turn off tech trading because of the new advantages the AI recieved but choosing humans super diplomacy makes tech trading worth it again. Because of your help I can now beat suicidal agian. The tips about going against 9 AIs also helped. Usually I just go up against 5. Seems like the colony rush ends sooner with 9 AIs and they cant take advantage of their gianormous economy as much to keep and unlimited supply of colony ships going forever.

One tip that I did not read from your strategy (but maybe I missed it) was to aquire as many research treaties as possible. I makes it so you can compete with the AIs in the reserach field and at the same time you get to shift all of your efforts to production. Currently I have 8 research treaties (out of 9 AIs and that is only because the Drath empire sucks at reserach and they don't want to trade me anything for anything) so I turned off my reserach bar completely and now my social production is skyrocketing. When I shift my production to military, ships are going to fly of the assembly line and heads will roll.

Thanks again Wyndstar.

Great tips. I have been doing all factory's on my home world and research on every other one I get except of course the big 16 or better class eco world to keep me from totally going broke. I get speed bonus and crank out small colony ships and about 5 to 8 survey ships with no engines on a small hull and basic life support where it fits. After I have about 10 planets on a gig map I usually have another planet I make my manu capital since I tend to flip my capital to something else as it gets farther from the action. About the time I get the manu capital building, my capital colony spits out some small constructors I call Toolbox class ships to grab every resource I can see and a few small fighters after that so I can have some military rating even if its terrible then I make it econ if Im bleeding bc or tech if Im not. I actually ignore the threats with this strat since I'm going mostly research on my other planets I can spit out medium ships by the time anyone has researched invasions. I only play gig maps on painful though and survey ships and agressive tech trading with everyone keeps me from going too broke early on. I don't know if I can stay alive on any higher difficulty long enough and the diplo boost they seem to have kills my economy. I also trade for planets as much as possible but if its way too far from my other colonies I end up trying to trade it later on for treaties since it seems the AI likes to pick fights over influence in its midsts. I guess on higher dif levels I'd have to go factory strat which is great for spitting out tons of ships but I never seem to have the huge edge on techs with it, just keep even mostly and I love the power of having one ship wipe out fleets of the enemy with the research strat.

The way to pull ahead on research with the factory strat is to build and equip lots of economic starbases ASAP. +384% to production and research... yum...

Looks like some good stuff. Are there any strategies on Ship building specifically?

Right now I'm on suicidal as humans against yor and korath.

The problem is our research (end of most techs) is pretty much the same now and they can make better ships and fleets than me.

For example yor has dreadnaughts with around 500 to mass drivers and 100 to 200 to a defense. I've tried building small fighters and grouping them together to take out these big things but it doesn't seem to work. Is there anyway to beat the comps when they have endgame weapons and defenses?

I've slowly taken 3 planets, 2 from yor and 1 from korath, but I don't think I can outbuild the yor and make a military fast enough unless I understand more about ship designing. I thought I read somewhere that smaller ships do better against large and huge ships cause of a maneuverability factor, but maybe thats wrong. Anyways looking for faq or something on how it works. It doesn't explain much about it in guide, I think.

Classic Marshall, classic!

Hi!

You'll never match their ship ton-by-ton, because at suicidal they get ~60% better miniaturization. Using defenses on your mainline warships is also pointless, because their fleets pack 3-4 times as much punch as you can fit defenses on your single ship. Also you can not win attrition war, as they'll produce 3 times as much of everythign as you can. So avoid their main fleets and go after their economy: planets and mining starbases (mil minig SBs should be your prime target, econ and morale a secondary). And DON'T FIGHT A TWO-FRONT WAR!!! Make peace with both sides, and make them fight each other. After they destroy most of their fleets, attack the losing side.

About ship design:
- use huge ships full of ultimate weapons (missiles are the best for that purpose) and one-two best engines;
- use those ships as suicidal missiles: throw them one by one at their fleet(s) that represent main obstacle in your war. If you go in with a whole fleet, you'll lose it in return fire. By sending single ship you'll probably "kill" with it ~1.5 ship of theirs, so at the end you'll lose less as they do. And BTW prey the off-type defense bug does not exist in your game.
- for cleaning orbits of planets without OFM, and their already-weakend fleets have the second huge-hull design: very high-defense low-attack (OFC more than their mainline ships have defenses) single-engine ship, that will eliminate defenders one by one without much damage taken. If their ships have too much defenses, put those ships in fleets.
- a third design should be a raider: very fast (3+ engines), rest weapons and some life supports, maybe some defenses to lessen the damage from their armed transports and escorts. Main goal for it is harrasing opponent's rear: killing starbases, transports, freighters, and "baiting" his main fleets avay from his space, so you can invade more easily.


That was defensive tactic in DL where one ship could destroy only one in a single round of combat. I don't know how's in DL now, but in DA big ships rule the battlefield.

BR, Iztok

As always Iztok, love your work. I use the huge hull all weapons tactic constantly in the endgame, and you will do better than 1.5 kills with each ship, IME. Say your average engame ship has about 800 attack for the player (varies between 500 and 1k, depending on military starbases, etc.) - that is about 400 pts of damage. About the best huge hull I've seen the AI use has around 190 hp, that is still more than two ships destroyed per attack. By using expendable, huge hull "missles" you can lower your losses, despite the AIs tech advantage, to a 2 to 5 ship trade. This will take you three moves per fleet of five. Say Enemy has 5 ships. Send in your first suicide missle, enemy is reduced to 3 ships, one damaged. Send in your second suicide missle, enemy is reduced to one heavy damaged ship (their fleet is typically destroyed, but survives due to tie rule). Send in full xp fleet of five huge hulls, clean up last survivor. Result: regardless of tech, you lost 2 huge hulls, AI loses 5. Repeat as needed.

And, with worlds without an OFM, you should lose no ships. Tie rule. This has been talked about to death elsewhere.

Just stopping by on my laptop while on the road. Great stuff all. I think I'm getting too much credit here, Iztok and Purge have both offered plenty of gold advice as well. Lets see a little love all around

Peace.

The Positronic Torpedo II is particularly cost effective. I tend to use it for the end game battles since I can produce Huge ships with it in much greater quantities than a BHE....Especially if they are just going to be destroyed.

Hi!

IMO the main point when deciding what weapons kamikaze ships will have is how much attack bonuses your race has. If they're low, the PT-II will likely be underpowered, and you'll need to spend 3 ships instead of 2. Despite the FP/price ratio between PT-II and BHE is about 22:16, that's still not cheaper.

BR, Iztok

I think this is a touch easier way to illustrate/understand the difference.
The Positonic Torp II is:
Cost 70
Firepower 15
or 70/15 = 4.7 Cost per point of damage (rounded)

The BHE is:
Cost 160
Firepower 25
or 160/25 = 6.4 Cost per point of damage

I ran through all the weapons at one point and the Positonic Torp II had the best ratio in the game. I don't think any of the numbers have changed since then. Mind this isn't the only consideration and if the situation is as you described above the Positronic Torp II isn't the best for that case. But I would definitely look at the numbers as they match up against any opponent you are facing, and if the Positonic Torp II will serve, it's the cheapest deal in the game. I think it has always been the best deal for me, but I usually have a nice collection of military resources by end game as well...