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Coelocanth

Join Date 03/2008

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Do you bother defending wormholes?

I'm playing a game vs 9 AI opponents (Normal difficulty, FFA, pirates active). It's a 5 star map with around 100 planets. So far, things are going okay, as I've managed tot ake out 3 of the 5 other empires in my local star system and am pretty much ready to take out the last of the resistance. However, it turns out there are 4 wormholes in my system and I've noticed other empires are starting to send scouts through them. So thins got me wondering what to do about that. Without them, it would be easy enough to leave a defense fleet at the local star, but with the wormholes, what do you guys do?

If I leave a fleet at the local star, I can easily be back-doored through a wormhole. But with 4 wormholes and the star itself, there's no way to leave a defense fleet at every entry point. It hasn't become an issue yet, but I'm a bit concerned that when I jump to some of the other stars I won't have time to get my fleet back into my own system if I'm attacked. Any thoughts for a srategy on this?

Note: I'm completely new to 4x strategy games and have only been playing Sins for a couple weeks when I have the time. So I'm probably making a ton of noob mistakes.

Oh, and for interest's sake, I'm about 6 hours into the game and have researched damned near the whole of the military and civilian tech trees. Fleet is maxed out.

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If it's a free for all, make some allies! Follow the requests that some of the empires give you. After doing a few, you will be given the chance to make a treaty. A few treaties should get them off your back long enough to make a move elsewhere. If you get a full blown alliance, you might even be able to have them defend your wormholes.

The computer does make some mistakes that seriously slow down their major assaults. One of them is their use and management of siege frigates. Keep turrets around your planets to keep siege frigates at bay, and it should slow down a possible assault quite a bit.

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The AI doesen't seem to attack through worm holes. Somehow it seems to me it doesen't really know how to use them strategically. This means it might send some scouts, or even a couple of siege frigates, but not a part of it's real army to take out some of the undefended planets of yours. I had a game yesterday against 3 hard AI's, and none of them attacked me through the worm hole, but instead kept sending troops to my heavily defended fringe Asteroids bordering to their empires.

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Thanks for the replies. I'll keep playing and see how it goes (how can you not keep playing this game? Damn you SD/IC!), but if they don't attack through the wormholes it's going to be a whole lot easier.

Bobucles: I'm not using Diplomacy in this particular game (as I said, I'm a noob, so I decided to forgo that option for this round).

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Perhaps the AI has changed over the course of the patches, but I recall very clearly in 1.02 having giant fleets come through wormholes to destroy one of my planets and then flee back through when I finally got my fleet back there.

They would use it quite effectively to hit any world of mine that was a jump or two away from it, and then would retreat back through it when my superior fleet approached.

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What are you guys talking about? The AI rush my wormhole all the time (gosh that sounds dirty) and they're a bitch to defend. In fact defending in general is a pain in this game. I hate how playing the AI would suddenly appear in a wormhole with a huge fleet, the rush pass my defenders then, then goes on a rampage in my flanks despite the fact that I have a fleet defending the god damn wormhole.

The defensive elements in this game totally sucks. With enough numbers anyone can just plow through your lines and do some damage. This game either need better defensive structures or buff up those phase jump inhibitors.

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Interesting replies.

So apparently the AI attacks sometimes through wormholes, but didn't do it in my game (well, they sent scouts, and some siege frigates, but nothing I would call serious). I wonder why. Actually, that would be a good thing. Since it would make the AI much harder by giving it more ways to attack.

Anyway, I will observe the worm holes in my next game, to check whether they attack through it or not.

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From what I can gather worm holes do not connect to other solar systems, so once you have the system to yourself you can ignore them.

I have however seen them attack with their main assault fleet then send a lesser fleet through the wormhole to the same planet 80% of the time. So I do defend the planets next to a wormhole with max defenses. I have also noticed that they use this option far less often then a frontal assault.

MP is a whole other story (first sentence still applies). Considering that if I scouted out my enemy to find he has left undefended planets worth attacking around a wormhole I would use the wormhole to take full advantage of this, so I consider planets around a wormhole to be the same as front line planets and treated/defended as such.

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From what I can gather worm holes do not connect to other solar systems, so once you have the system to yourself you can ignore them.

Not true, I'm afraid. See Voruk's Labyrinth (a medium sized map which comes with the game) as an example.

Ben

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Wormholes are always a pain until you control both sides, and for that matter all of the ponts that connect to the two sides. Making an ally of the AI that has the other side is a good idea, but then it may have allys that use it to attack. If you have a weak point attached to a wormhole the AI will use it. The AI also uses wormholes and any neutral space object to mass fleets, so at some point you almost have to dedicate a fleet to hold it until both sides are secure.

Wormholes and stars are the biggest pain to defend, anything that has a lane to either has to be considered a prime target. You really need to think before you expand, can you defend what you took, did it just open up a new front you can't afford to hold, stuff like that.

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Update: so far no AI fleets have come through the wormholes, although I have seen a lot of scouts come through.

A note: on my map they do connect to other star systems.

I've successfully wiped out all hostiles in my star system (including the pirate base), so now it's time to see how it goes when I jump to the others. There are only 3 AI opponents left now, so it should be interesting to see what they have in store for me. Time to fire up the scout ships again!

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Keep in mind Coelocanth that it seems in the games I've played, the AI only floods through the wormholes in the case that you have a nearly undefended planet just sitting there exposed.

I've seen them also only do what you're saying with sending scouts in if a planet is heavily fortified or has any sort of decent fleet sitting nearby. Also, if they're preoccupied with other attacks on them, they won't be sending big fleets through the wormhole either.

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From what I can gather worm holes do not connect to other solar systems, so once you have the system to yourself you can ignore them.

Somehow it connect them, played random multi system game recently and wormholes do connect distant star systems, so its easily used by AI or other ways.

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In the saved game that my buddy Gary and I are playing now, he's trapped behind a wormhole that one of the AIs keeps sending a massive fleet to hold. We're playing on one of my custom maps, there are 6 empires total and the star system has (if I recall properly) 45 or so total planets/planet entities. He's stuck with 3 colonizable worlds until I can break him out and meanwhile, I'm thrashing the AI closest to me, who wants back his volcanic world that is at a handy crossroads and that I needed to grab to get out of my home region.

One can get into some very interesting situations with different terran, especially if you turn down the chance of phase lanes. (which ends up making more restricted lanes of travel)

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The only way I defend any wormhole is heavy defenses on the surrounding planets or (in the latest case that im playing) leave the wormhole and surrounding areas alone and defend the choke point with heavy defense and a large home fleet(s). Or with the map I'm playing, the sun is centered between the 2 worm holes, home fleet(s) stays at the sun and the surrounding planets and astroides are ready for bear. The defense are in no way suppose to stop the enemy fleet, just to delay them until the home fleet(s) arrive.

This is for SP only (wouldnt try this in MP)

Also a good defense is a aggressive offense, go through the wormhole and take the surrounding planets, create a buffer zone that you can either reinforce or retreat from.

Take this all with a grain or salt.

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Update: almost finished this particular map. I've conquered 4 stars and am working my way through the planets of the final star. The last remaining AI is putting up some resistance (seems they don't want to go without a fight - go figure. It avails them not: they will be assimilated!) Anyway, no fleets have passed through the wormholes, only scout craft.

I've been doing as suggested and just upgrading planets near the wormholes with defenses and it's working out fine. In fact, I fully upgrade every planet I conquer as a matter of course, since the cost has no impact on my resources (I'm playing TEC and this far into a long game like this, I have so many resources to spend that I actually can't even find a use for them. I own so many planets that the list is too long to show my credit income per second, but my metal is around 14/s and crystal is just over 12/s). Tonight will finish this one off and then I think I'll try out the other races (probably try Vasari next).

Thanks for all the input. It's much appreciated.

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The defensive elements in this game totally sucks. With enough numbers anyone can just plow through your lines and do some damage. This game either need better defensive structures or buff up those phase jump inhibitors.

Offense is the best defense. Take the offensive first, strike first and hard, force the enemy to commit a fleet to defend against yours. Use your movibilty and keep moving. Try to destroy as much structures/planets/ships that you can while losing the least amount of your ships.

Thus his economy is suffering and yours isn't. Every credit he spend rebuilding is one less credit to build a ship to attack you and one less credit to use to expand his economy.

Don't sit on your arse and then come here whining that you got attacked and spanked.

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I am playing a game at present where I tried to take a planet that I had to bypass a worm hole to get too. The AI took out my capital ship when huge swarm came through. I got spamed by a big fleet of small ships and one capital ship.

My Koll and a few kodiaks could not handle the big numbers. I will be back with a similar fleet but with a lot of LRM's to combat the numbers.

I think the worm hole area big problem, but add to the depth of the game.

One thing I would like to see with egard to planet defenses is the ability of your home planet to have uber defenses, that can only be on your home planet.

Cheers MarkL

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I suggest you graduate up to at least 'Hard' as 'Normal' difficulty will likely not challenge you especially since you appear to have a decent grasp at this point.

Javaslinger

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