Hey Loups: Great job with the win on Suicidal. Thanks for making a post about what you learned, too - it'll help out everyone who reads it. I'm personally terrible on any level above Tough, but I'll try some of your strategies in the meantime.

BTW - I'm not sure if calling the Altarians "terrible" on Suicidal meant that they sucked, or that they were ridiculously good. I myself love to play Altarians, so I kind of hope that "terrible" means they are hard to beat. I kind of doubt it though.

Also, you should check out this older AAR by Wyndstar:

Altarian Rebellion AAR

Again - thanks alot for the post and congratulations! Best Regards.

~ Cypher ~

Hey Loups,

I, too, just beat my first suicidal game about 10 minutes ago, and came rushing back to this forum to shout in delight and let everyone know about the experience, but you beat me to it!   LOL

I, too, played the Drath and my first observation is that I feel comfortable I can beat the AI using the Drath on any difficulty setting. They are mondo powerful. I just keep everyone at war with each other full-time. It increases my income and keeps me flush from the beginning of the game to the end. They also leave me alone because they are too busy fighting each other, and it slows their colony rush when they blow up each other's colony ships. I was able to actually win the colony rush this way.

What I discovered in this game was that building fertility clinics is the most pwerful strategy I've come up with yet. I take a planet, lay down a slave pit (gotta get the slave pit asap) and then spam fertility clinics. Your population soars quickly. This is useful not for the cash (I've got so much from war profiteering that tax revenues are pathetic  no matter what) but for the extra influence you get from the population. I was able to grow my population way past those super-breeding Torians by mid-game and then it just soared. I had over half the population of the enitre galaxy and I was getting two planets a turn flipping to me because my orange Drath influence blob kept growing like an insane bacterial culture. I then decided to enhance this effect by researching the cultural conquest techs and mining two influence resources I had nabbed. I won the game handily by cultural conquest without ever having been in a war or even buildng a warship until the last ten rounds (just to try and increase my military score). I did trade for a few warships earlier in the game....I didn't want to look like too enticing a target, but really you just keep them busy fighting each other and spam culture at them while you secretly out-breed them with your orgy centers...err...fertility clinics.

I also have developed another strategy I use very effectively.....on round one I lock my military production slider at 1% and leave it there for the entire game. Crazy? Nope. This means my planets spend all their money on building improvements and research. I rush buy a fatory or two on Dratha, then stop building there, and let it produce colony ships with the excess production. Eventually with the right tech and rush bought improvements (go ahead, just buy the manufacturing capital and industrial sector, you have the cash from the war-profiteering!) I am pumping out a colony ship every two rounds. I also use minutarization to make smaller, less expensive colony ships to get to the one ship/2 rounds target. Or just produce blank cargo ships and upgrade them when the get to the target planet. You can pump out a colonizer every round this way, but you need lots of cash for the upgrades. Again, no problem, we're war profiteers. My other planets don't produce starships until they have finished building their improvements (all those fertility clinics). I don't need them to produce starships though since I am not going to fight with anyone and I'm cranking out a colonizer every round or two.

This worked incredibly well in my game. I got a better score than on all my non-suicidal games (before I learned how to crank out colonizers and how powerful the lowly fertility clinic is). Yes, the Drath rule. Literally in my universe. Now,, for a real playing challenge I am going to have to go back, pick another race to scale up with, and determine what strategies work for them.

Congrats on your Suicidal win!

Your current military rating is determined by the computed strength of your warships (a few strong ships can defeat a large number of weak ships but the rating does not consider this; the Krynn likes to spam lots of weak fighters). Your end game score is determined by the area under the graph of the related metric (i.e., your military score is based on your military rating graph for the entire game). So rapidly increasing your rating near the end of the game won't increase your score by much.

I also use small and later tiny hulls for colony and constructor ships to reduce their cost.  I might use a fast constructor with lots of range to claim a resource but once claimed there is no longer a need for life support modules for the ones that follow.  If the resource is far away it might still make sense to add engines to get the follow up constructors there faster given that constructors now have a maintenance cost and the sooner they arrive the sooner you receive the resource bonus.  Usually I just slap a constructor module on a tiny hull to produce them quickly.

 

Since Dec. 2005 I've won several suicide wins on DL and DA; I only ever quit one game, my first attempt at suicide in DA against the improved AI. That game I tried to beat the AI by better developing my planets and then pick my first target as I had done many times in DL. However, I found in DA the AI was much better at developing its planets so to win I needed to pay them (usually the Drengin/Korath) to go to war to keep them busy and switch to the all-factories strategy. 2007/11/11 Detailed Suicide Medium Map DA AAR!

Until now I've just played TA on tough while I got familiar with the new tech tech trees and switched back to a mixed factories & labs strategy. Currently, I'm playing my first suicide TA game with 9 AIs. I'm playing a custom race super breeder using the Altarians tech tree and the all-factories strategy. It one point I had to drop my spending to 80-90% for several turns to avoid hitting the -500BC mark which shutdowns all production and research. It is now early in 2228 and with my planet populations maxed out and planets fully developed I found I had too little production for decent research and too much surplus income. I have 18 colonies (one a class 4 [before terraforming] colonized by the Drengin in my zone of influence culture flipped to me). Six had only a farm, temple, starport, and manufacturing centers with the remaining 12 having only a farm, temple, and trade centers (later to be upgraded to stock markets once I need the extra income and can spare the time for the required research). My highest PQ planet was a class 20 (with a moon for a 10% production bonus) on my border with the Yor so I used 99% social spending and buying using my large surplus to quickly convert those trade centers to a starport and manufacturing centers. I've begun spamming medium hull combat ships with 4 particle beams and 4 shields that combined with my military bonuses (including a military resource 34% freed from the Drengin during war give me 15 attack in orbit of a planet, 10 otherwise and 11 defense); I'll add the 30% attack bonus in the Altarian tech tree once I've completed researching planetary invasion. Then I'll take out two minors in my zone close to three groups of mining bases I've developed to level 3, which will also become production power houses. Then I'll take out the Acreans in 9th place with only 8 colonies and Drath in 10th place with only 7 colonies; I'm currently in 8th place. My concern is the game leader the Drengin with 44 colonies (was 41 but they just picked up 3 rare extreme planets) since they are doing 5 times my recently increased research and already have ships with Nightmare Torpedo (strangely they have stuck with small hulls but god help me when they start using huge hulls). I paid the Drengin who were hostile to me to attack the four others hostile AIs, the Torians, Iconians, Terrians, and Krynn; that combined with my sudden growing military is improving relations. However, if the Drengin presses its huge advantage (which a human player would) it could crush their combined militaries and take their planets. They are researching useless techs and not enough weapons, defense, and larger hulls. Usually by now I would know if going to win an easy victory which is boring. This is proving to be an exciting game!