When I first got onto the forums, this was one of the first topics i ever saw. I remember thinking to myself "holy crap, playing against an unfair by myself? impossible!" Since then I have played a lot of LAN games with my roommate against increasing numbers of unfairs, but I had never really played any person v AI games. So for fun/killing time, I decided to do this.

i ended up winning in like 45 minutes as TEC (who i never play as). just scouts and marza util i had lrf. jut sent everything to the enemy capital and built some repair bays. I killed some stuff (assembly drone and capship) and retreated. repeat. I just killed a little more each time while getting bigger and building more repair bays. (at one point i had 2 scouts defend the roid vs pirates)

i basically just kept this up while doing minor research. i screwed up lightly by accidentally buiding a civ lab, but it was recoverable.

basically, after a month of reading this forum i won. I swear i would have gotten myself stuck in a losing situation if i had played this like i was. (hangers only, no repair, only lfs and probably just the Kol). So with my first actual victory using real strategy (not just building defenses and slowly expanding and making for a 18 hour game) I say thanks to darvin, top vasari, nerull, raging amish and probably some other people.

and yes i know its silly to congratulate myself over beating the ai on a very small map, but hey, a step is a step is a step. tonight ill try something harder.

I played Advent, and did a straight off Radiance rush. Plus light frigates, and buying the Radaince's first two levels, and i killed his capital ship. Researched Purge frigates and various starter weapons tech, killed his factories, and smoked his home planet. Then I killed the astroid he colonized, before he could make another capital ship. Note, if you kill his capital ship but not the factory, he will make another. Conversely, not killing his factory will leave you with a cloud of light frigates to fight. I played this map four times, beat it four times, three of which were under 7 minute wins, it might have been less, I didn't check the end times. First time I played it I didn't realize how close he really was till it was too late to rush him and ended up with a six hour game.