Early days strategy

from Sins Forums

Ok, please bear with me as i'm still very much a Noob. I've read and dissected a number of well written articles on here about strategies but eve on Easy with a small map I am struggling to keep my head above water. BTW I'm playing Vasari!

From the word go I build a Cap ship factory and churn out a Vasari Egg, then start on extractors for any nearby resources. I then send off the Cap ship with maybe one or two skirmisher frigates as support and capture/colonise the 2 nearest planets. From there on it gets tricky. I struggle to keep pirates off without bribing them with precious credits and then lack money to develop things. Otherwise I ignore them and build and try to improve planets and then struggle when the 'Rats come knocking. All this time i've barely looked at research due to lack of funds aside from trying to get the volcanic/ice habitation ones if they are close by.

So with that in mind, all tips/comments/abuse for not reading the manual welcome please :o)

Grebo

strategy
7,248 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

abuse for not reading the manual
End of quote

RTFM! :grin:

Now, seriously...

Vasari is a bit of a tricky start. Are you playing against one AI or more? If you're playing against only one AI and decide to keep pirates enabled, you don't have very many options on how to deal with them. You either have to outbid the AI or you have to eat the wave. If you play against multiple AIs, what I like to do is purposely have a slow start, so the AI looks at you as a pathetic weakling and starts bid wars with other stronger AIs.

Most of my games I play against lots of Unfairs in FFA, and it's very rare that I even have to worry about bidding anything on the first wave (and usually the second).

Second, you don't really need skirmishers along with your space whale. It's pretty capable of doing stuff on its own, and those ships cost a lot of credits early. Especially if you send them along to take a heavier defended planet (with a few LRMs and heavy cruisers) they tend to die because the LRMs love ignoring your capital and firing on them and that's a lot of wasted credits early on.

As a rule of thumb, I only colonize when I can afford to upgrade infrastructure immediately. If you don't, the planet actually costs you income from underdevelopment.

Last thing, don't be afraid of selling resources. Early game especially. Crystal is going to be your main limiter (you need ~80 for labs, ~100 to research ice/volcanic colonization and you only have 1-2 mines, 3 if you're lucky and get an asteroid with 2) so it takes a while. You tend to get quite a big of metal then. Instead of doing quick sell, open the black market window and list them for sale. The AI tends to buy it pretty quickly, and you get lots more $$!

Hope this helps a little :P I usually avoid suggesting this because I think it's less fun, but if pirates are just giving you too much trouble and you want to get a hang of the early start without worrying about them, you can go into Game Options when you're creating a game and disable them.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

 

Do yourself a favor and make sure that the teams are set to LOCKED when you start a new game (and double check before starting a saved game) because otherwise the AI will gang up on you and you'll be facing 5 or 7 opposing AI all allied together against you.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Easy AIs don't generally gang up much :P

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

More than one AI and Pirates, not just yet thanks, still learning to cope on small map with just Rats and one AI! I very nearly binned the game after the first several abortive games but it is bloody addictive, i've not been sat up so late over a game since I first played Civ2 or Age Of Empires or maybe even Elite some 20 years ago!

Thanks for the advice, I have Read TFM and being a real man promptly ignored it as I do all manuals until I was convinced the game was broken or just far too hard for me to grasp!

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

If it wasn't obvious, I was completely joking on the RTFM thing, since you asked O:)

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

lol it's fine I didn't miss the humour there, I did try to read the manual but thought it easier to jump straight in!

 

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Well, the first General strategy I use for each faction:

 

2 scouts (or one, depending) and Crystal/Cap Factory.


Colonizer Cap, same time make a metal Extractor and civ lab.

Upgrade Colonizer with Colonize and fighter squad.

GO to nearby planet with 4-8 Light Frigs.

Take out Krosov first. (Build Civ lab again on homeworld)

Colonize asteroid once Krosov is out.


Finish Cobalt and mvoe to next possible planet with at least 2-4 more light frigs (research Ice/Volcanic colonization)

Clear world defenses, build one military lab on the asteroid and homeworld.


Research LRF's (if you spam them, at least, if not, get Anti-fighter frigs)

 

There on out you should be good to go.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

I'm in agreeance with Annatar mostly. And I definitely agree with "skip the skirmishers". One other thing to consider, for an alternate (slightly easier IMO) start is to hold off building your first lab for a few seconds and see if you get lucky on the random planet draw. If you have a couple of Asteroids first up, then you can hold off on the 2x Civ labs for Artic/Volcanic colonisation, and instead drop 1x Military labs and research Assailants straight off the bat.

 

Of course, that only works if you're lucky with the planets, but it's nice when it happens.

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Cheers people, after starting anew last night I managed to get a good draw on the map, with lovely choke points. i then took ti slow but steady to get essentials in place before expanding out and creating a reasonable sized fleet to crush all before me including the pesky pirates. just left with 6 Enemy AI planets to now destroy!