All Labs, Suicidal, need advice.
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Ok so I just got my first suicidal victory. I've been hyper-specializing in the all labs strategy (although now that I tagged suicidal I have started to work on an all factory strat). Anyhow I *barely* squeezed it out. I was using the same strategy that I had worked on all the way up to suicidal and it felt VERY strong on Masochistic, and even on Obscene only needed slight modification. On suicidal, I REALLY had to improvise badly to make it. I am curious of any advanced insight. I'm sure I can figure it out on my own, but I'm pretty tired of this strat right now so I'm probably writing this as a post-mortem and then moving on with other strats. Anyhow here's what I basically did. Feel free to pick it entirely apart. I won, but not convincingly.
Altarian - +4 research, +4 econ, +2 diplomacy, technologists
Tiny galaxy, occasional planets (I did not want a colony rush), occasional everything, normal tech.
9 opponents.
I ctrl-N'd for a +300% research tile (cheap, but I needed all the help I could get)
- Send miner exploring, basically parking them next to a distant civilization to make a quick freighter the second I get trade
- Eat anomolies as efficiently as possible
- colonize Wisp
Build:
3 labs, 7 markets on home. 2 labs on wisp
Autobuy my first lab, Auto-upgrade first lab, Auto-buy second lab, Auto-buy third lab and first Wisp lab.
Tech:
Basically get Xeno labs, get Xeno entertainment (this puts Wisp at 100% morale), get xeno medicine, get one level of economics, go Republic, get Trade (convert miner and auto-buy another), get economics through trade centers, soil enhancement, go to majesty and democracy, weapons ...
Strategy:
Get a solid financial base ASAP. This requires Trade early, but also relies on Wisp getting up to pop fast as well so after the first round of terraforming I can lay down a couple trade centers and it will almost cover itself.
I get research treaties as fast as I possibly can and try and send my first freighters to evil races to buy myself time. I research extremely useless techs (environment techs) and sell them using my high diplomacy, or just give them away to races that hate me. This strategy HEAVILY relies on lots of tech trading for money in the early game, so I research all kinds of crap like xeno farms and sensors and starbase defense, which I can sell for a lot and give them very little strategic advantage.
Usually somewhere around the 1 year mark things are heating up. I have several trade routes (bought from money I got from selling junk tech) and am working on finishing up wisp (with soil enhancement). This is when the death threats begin. I start a bunch of wars between races and those who hate me, and typically get 3+ races to attach one evil neighbor of mine. All I do is build transports and sweep in and invade when they are weakest. I still don't have a single warship.
From there I have a tech AND planet advantage and can usually roll with it.
This game:
I had a GREAT early game and raced through the techs. I actually manged to get all 11 trade routes up (I always go neutral) before war broke out ... which is a good sign because now I have a massive economic surplus. I was surrounded by Korath, Drengin, and Korx ... which sucked for me since I was good for many weeks and this made them hate me more, but I kept paying them off. Eventually I got almost everyone to attack the Korath and ignore me and within a couple months I had stolen their two worlds with only transports. Next the GOOD races started to hate me and the Drath declared war on me. All the neutrals jumped on them and I didn't really have to defend while I took the Korx out, again with just transports while their neighbors pounded on them. Every other race now had 2 planets to my 6. The Drath were just about to hit me (and I had 3 warships total that I had bought with tech and money), when I was able to get a peace treaty with them. Super Organizer I guess made the war with me a lot harder than they wanted it to be.
Anyhow from here it was a sure win, or so I thought. I had vastly superior tech (I was at phasors and had drones for PD tech ... which basically made my ships VERY resilient vs their harpoons), a somewhat faltering economy (converting enemy worlds to research/econ worlds is SLOW), a HUGE population/planet advantage, and almost no navy ... but no wars.
From there I really struggled to get a navy up and running, but the only thing that saved me was continuing to incite wars with potential enemies. Well eventually those enemies started to fall and the iconians were threatening to get 2 more planets, so I cut off their assault, again sneaking in transports in the middle of their huge battle, and I manged to get Drath, but they got Drath IV (or whatever). The drengin fell quickly to me as well, though some other race got Kona. Now I ripped through influence tech and managed to flip Kona and drath minor. So now I had a staggering planet lead, but suddenly my massive tech advantage started to fail me. My navy (56 logistic mixes of smalls, mediums, and 1 or 2 larges) started to get its ass kicked by very underteched competition.
This is where I had major issues. I had all the resources to surely dominate, but I just couldn't get fleets up and running quick enough. Every ship I lost was a terrible loss, and I only had two or three worlds that could reliably produce anything bigger than a small. Also I now had Aereons and Doom rays, but the remaining enemy was into Mass drivers so I had to quickly get armor tech up. Its just so hard to produce ships with those super techs without any real production. Basically I just ended up buying everything I could, having to drop my economy slider to 50% (which would net me 3000 surplus a week) just to get the cash necessary.
Maybe I just suck late game, but even when I had the last civilization (thalans) down to 3 planets I still almost lost it. My fleet attacked them and all of a sudden, they didn't have mass drivers anymore, they had damned lasers. I lost 37 points of my 56 point fleet in the assault and had to retreat. I had no shield tech so I lease-bought 3 huge's that had every possible slot filled with doom rays and used them ot finish them off ... but it was dicey. At the end I had one of those huge's left and two large's which used to be part of my 56 point fleet.
So I won, but I feel like I did a lot wrong. Mid-late game was MUCH harder than I felt it should be considering how massive my tech advantage was and how much free cash I had floating around. I also went NLC's mid-late game and that felt like a mistake. I am extremely comfortable with the early game tech/diplomacy part. I'm also pretty confident in my ability to sneak transports in and quietly take out civilizations I've paid others to attack. But once it comes time to actually fight it out, I lose badly.
Altarian - +4 research, +4 econ, +2 diplomacy, technologists
Tiny galaxy, occasional planets (I did not want a colony rush), occasional everything, normal tech.
9 opponents.
I ctrl-N'd for a +300% research tile (cheap, but I needed all the help I could get)
- Send miner exploring, basically parking them next to a distant civilization to make a quick freighter the second I get trade
- Eat anomolies as efficiently as possible
- colonize Wisp
Build:
3 labs, 7 markets on home. 2 labs on wisp
Autobuy my first lab, Auto-upgrade first lab, Auto-buy second lab, Auto-buy third lab and first Wisp lab.
Tech:
Basically get Xeno labs, get Xeno entertainment (this puts Wisp at 100% morale), get xeno medicine, get one level of economics, go Republic, get Trade (convert miner and auto-buy another), get economics through trade centers, soil enhancement, go to majesty and democracy, weapons ...
Strategy:
Get a solid financial base ASAP. This requires Trade early, but also relies on Wisp getting up to pop fast as well so after the first round of terraforming I can lay down a couple trade centers and it will almost cover itself.
I get research treaties as fast as I possibly can and try and send my first freighters to evil races to buy myself time. I research extremely useless techs (environment techs) and sell them using my high diplomacy, or just give them away to races that hate me. This strategy HEAVILY relies on lots of tech trading for money in the early game, so I research all kinds of crap like xeno farms and sensors and starbase defense, which I can sell for a lot and give them very little strategic advantage.
Usually somewhere around the 1 year mark things are heating up. I have several trade routes (bought from money I got from selling junk tech) and am working on finishing up wisp (with soil enhancement). This is when the death threats begin. I start a bunch of wars between races and those who hate me, and typically get 3+ races to attach one evil neighbor of mine. All I do is build transports and sweep in and invade when they are weakest. I still don't have a single warship.
From there I have a tech AND planet advantage and can usually roll with it.
This game:
I had a GREAT early game and raced through the techs. I actually manged to get all 11 trade routes up (I always go neutral) before war broke out ... which is a good sign because now I have a massive economic surplus. I was surrounded by Korath, Drengin, and Korx ... which sucked for me since I was good for many weeks and this made them hate me more, but I kept paying them off. Eventually I got almost everyone to attack the Korath and ignore me and within a couple months I had stolen their two worlds with only transports. Next the GOOD races started to hate me and the Drath declared war on me. All the neutrals jumped on them and I didn't really have to defend while I took the Korx out, again with just transports while their neighbors pounded on them. Every other race now had 2 planets to my 6. The Drath were just about to hit me (and I had 3 warships total that I had bought with tech and money), when I was able to get a peace treaty with them. Super Organizer I guess made the war with me a lot harder than they wanted it to be.
Anyhow from here it was a sure win, or so I thought. I had vastly superior tech (I was at phasors and had drones for PD tech ... which basically made my ships VERY resilient vs their harpoons), a somewhat faltering economy (converting enemy worlds to research/econ worlds is SLOW), a HUGE population/planet advantage, and almost no navy ... but no wars.
From there I really struggled to get a navy up and running, but the only thing that saved me was continuing to incite wars with potential enemies. Well eventually those enemies started to fall and the iconians were threatening to get 2 more planets, so I cut off their assault, again sneaking in transports in the middle of their huge battle, and I manged to get Drath, but they got Drath IV (or whatever). The drengin fell quickly to me as well, though some other race got Kona. Now I ripped through influence tech and managed to flip Kona and drath minor. So now I had a staggering planet lead, but suddenly my massive tech advantage started to fail me. My navy (56 logistic mixes of smalls, mediums, and 1 or 2 larges) started to get its ass kicked by very underteched competition.
This is where I had major issues. I had all the resources to surely dominate, but I just couldn't get fleets up and running quick enough. Every ship I lost was a terrible loss, and I only had two or three worlds that could reliably produce anything bigger than a small. Also I now had Aereons and Doom rays, but the remaining enemy was into Mass drivers so I had to quickly get armor tech up. Its just so hard to produce ships with those super techs without any real production. Basically I just ended up buying everything I could, having to drop my economy slider to 50% (which would net me 3000 surplus a week) just to get the cash necessary.
Maybe I just suck late game, but even when I had the last civilization (thalans) down to 3 planets I still almost lost it. My fleet attacked them and all of a sudden, they didn't have mass drivers anymore, they had damned lasers. I lost 37 points of my 56 point fleet in the assault and had to retreat. I had no shield tech so I lease-bought 3 huge's that had every possible slot filled with doom rays and used them ot finish them off ... but it was dicey. At the end I had one of those huge's left and two large's which used to be part of my 56 point fleet.
So I won, but I feel like I did a lot wrong. Mid-late game was MUCH harder than I felt it should be considering how massive my tech advantage was and how much free cash I had floating around. I also went NLC's mid-late game and that felt like a mistake. I am extremely comfortable with the early game tech/diplomacy part. I'm also pretty confident in my ability to sneak transports in and quietly take out civilizations I've paid others to attack. But once it comes time to actually fight it out, I lose badly.
