Without seeing the replay, I can't comment on what happened.  My guess would be that the AI accumulated a substantial advantage early on, but it deployed this very poorly and it took it over an hour to get its momentum together to make a kill against you.

This is another thread of someone who had a similar problem as you: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/378913

Eventually, I got a replay and was able to reverse engineer the entire scenario.  It turned out to be very simple economics; the AI won a massive early-game victory and invested a lot of money into economy while the human player had to invest all his money in units to survive.  In the long-run, the AI's economic advantage just kept building until finally the inertia was too great and the player got beaten.  If anything, the AI was doing a good job of being "easy" and giving its human opponent a fair chance to regroup and recover, and he might have even pulled it off if he'd expanded his economy better or kept his fleet together rather than letting half of it get cut off and killed.

You can't see his units on phase lanes, but you can see them in gravity wells.  As I said, use some proactive scouting and you'll be able to see them coming LONG before they arrive.

Were you scouting the intervening planets in the interim?  If you weren't scouting, don't be surprised if you don't know what's going on. 

Thanks for pulling that to my attention. I've re-uploaded the file.

http://www.filefront.com/17562525/Comp Stomp 03-30-10.record

That replay is still good for the most recent version of Sins (no expansions).

Its hard to help when you wont try out the advice givin.I may have to agree with desconner this is comical.

Thanks for all the replies. This game was producing too many anomalies, so I made a fresh install, patched up, and began some new games. It seems to be working fine. I have played a lot of games, heeding all the advice on this site, without success on the small map. The computer is cheating, of course, as it has to in order to produce a competitive game and the required levels of frustration, even on easy level. The thing about this game, compared to other RTS games, is that it is totally unforgiving. It produces AI forces out of all proportion to the time spent on the game, in order to overwhelm the player at any time and times-out the players forces quickly, even on easy aggressor, because the game has decided to terminate. I went back over some previously saved games, changing and experimenting with various tactics and strategies, and the same terminating Armageddon was produced that was shown in my last save, two or three saves ahead, which is to say half an hour forward. In two games I also checked the statistics before the Armageddon arrived, which showed 2 of everything for each player's development and also the statistics at the end, which produced the same standard chart showing the AI had suddenly developed ahead. Some players have claimed to have defeated the AI on their first attempt. I would be interested in watching this, if they could tell me how to download it. Thanks.

Ok, I gave this the benefit of the doubt for the first page, but now I'm convinced this has to be a troll.

'The computer is cheating, of course, as it has to in order to produce a competitive game and the required levels of frustration, even on easy level.The thing about this game, compared to other RTS games, is that it is totally unforgiving. It produces AI forces out of all proportion to the time spent on the game, in order to overwhelm the player at any time and times-out the players forces quickly, even on easy aggressor, because the game has decided to terminate.'

Seriously? Easy is frustrating, yes, frustratingly easy. Please post a replay of you doing so bad against an easy AI, because I really have no idea how you do it. Against hard AI I have to make sure and not attack it too soon or I cripple it and the game pretty much ends there.

Also, if you want unforgiving, go play Starcraft. Sins slow pace combined with the empire tree, greater zoom features, pause that still lets you issue orders, and many other things make Sins incredibly forgiving.

Agreed. None of this makes sense and still no replay.

 

At this point, we need to see a replay.  These kinds of difficulties are not unheardof, but generally mean there's some fundamental problems with your technique, approach, or pacing.  I've done extensive reviews of the AI in replays, and I can assure you that normal and easy do not cheat, and easy in fact receives a substantial penalty to its income.

There was some speculation a while back that there might be a bug with the easy AI causing it to overperform, but no one has ever provided a replay of this happening and no experienced player has ever seen it happen (though to be fair we rarely play on difficulties below "hard", which as Myles mentions is actually very easy to beat once you get experienced)

Okay, Here is my last save: http://www.filefront.com/17587988/autorecord-11302328.record

When I came to play this save (the 7th), which was half an hour into a battle, no phase lines were showing, nor were objects clearly shown on the planets and I had to micromanage from the sidebar. It continued for another half hour until I terminated the game after two and three quarters hours.

You didn't by chance have Cinematic Mode on? That removes all the 2D elements on the screen (icons, gravity wells, phase lanes, etc) for screenshot purposes.

What you're describing seems to be an interface bug, or as InfiniteVoid points out you may mistakenly be playing in cinematic mode, which is pretty well only useful for screen capture; it's pretty well impossible to actually play.

I'd also like to point out that you are using both expansions.

 

I took a look at the replay; it begins over an hour into the game, and the AI had already accumulated a substantial advantage by this point.  A veteran could still pull this off, but this is pretty much unwinnable for a beginner.  The AI has a much larger empire, a much better economy, and some very high-level capital ships (that level 6 Marza in particular is a major threat).  I'd be much more interested in looking at what got you into to this situation.  I highly suspect your pace of colonization is much too slow, which means I'm most interested in the first half-hour of the game.

This is a screenshot of the map I took while I watched your replay, for others to see:

It was taken at about 1:40, and at this point it looks like the AI is on the verge of making a killing blow, since your failed rush at a starbase got your fleet killed.

Your assets: 
4 planets (~25% developed)
202 /690 fleet supply
3 capital ships (levels 3,3,1)
0 starbases
Savings:  13000 credits, 1200 metal, 1400 crystal
Income:  19 credits, 2.2 metal, 3.3 crystal

Enemy assets:
7 Planets (~75% developed)
476/500 fleet supply
4 capital ships (levels 6,4,3,1)
3 starbases
Savings:  2700 credits, 1600 metal, 600 crystal
Income: 40 credits, 5.6 metal, 4.8 crystal

This really reaffirms my theory of slow colonization; the AI colonizes faster, giving it more income, which it then uses to develop its existing planets faster.  Basically you get an effect like compound-interest, and a small initial advantage for the AI turns into an overwhelming economic advantage over the course of an hour.  By the point at which the replay starts, it's much too late to reverse this advantage.

Pbhead I like your avatar.  Are you a lead brick?

Dude!  StarCraft AI was so evil, they auto-knew where your base was before the game freak'n even started.  LAN play was developed so you didn't have to die over and over and over again.  WarCraft III was such a big hit because StarCraft AI was crap.  Windows 7 nukes the memory flags, so AI on WarCraft III is not possible anymore.  Blizzard probably doesn't care, so I'm not gonna bother saying anything, same=same.

Thanks again. I was not playing cinematic mode. I tried it once and it was no good. I am playing the Trinity edition of Sins. The AI always has the advantage in one area or another and always turns it to a winning advantage. I work quickly in the game, but on my reckoning, it always develops and expands 10X faster than myself. ( I have all options on fast). The AI Marzda was hugely upgraded. Where did it get the experience from, as pirates are off in this game? I had destroyed two Capital Ships in another battle, and this was the first time I had seen the Marzda. Your screenshot is different from what I saw in the game, with at least four other planets occupied by the AI, that were not showing in the game. Nor were the planets showing any detail and were mostly in darkness, even though they had been scouted recently, and were not flagged up. If you are interested, here are the two previously saved games:

http://www.filefront.com/17588816/AutoRecord-11301849.record

http://www.filefront.com/17588821/AutoRecord-11301843.record

 

Trinity does give both you and the AI more options now...

At the forefront would the be the usage of Starbases. At this point, the AI is not intelligent enough to devise a way to take down an SB except for throwing its entire attacking fleet at it (possibly minus siege frigates) in the hopes of overwhelming the SB. That being said, provided you can set one up and upgrade its HP to the max and support it with repair bays, it can stonewall many AI offensives. Alternatively, if you can get to Safety Override Protocol research (Tier 5 Defense, I think), you can set up what's known as a "boombase" - simply put, build a starbase with (at least one) upgrades in SOP and self-destruct it to instantly destroy all but the heaviest ships in range (IIRC, the damage is 8000 for both levels - second level just increases blast radius). If you do choose to use one, don't have any of your own ships in its area of effect - it will destroy those too. You'll probably also want some HP upgrades to ensure the SB lives long enough to allow for as much of the enemy fleet as possible to get in range.

Don't forget, however, that SBs are not cheap to build and upgrade, so trying to set one up too early can break you economically, and afterwards, militarily.

I am still not convinced any specific strategy wins. Tactics may win or lose locally, but no overall strategy is a winning one. I have begun another game and I still have to micromanage from the sidebar and the AI enemy forces are not showing as they were before on the planets. I am unable to expand further without encountering the enemy player, and I suspect Armageddon is beckoning. One ruse, players may have noticed, is this: when I order a phase jump with forces that will result in a defeat on the enemy planet, because the computer knows this, it sends in an expendable ship (sometimes one after the other) to the same planet which my forces have to engage and so my orders are delayed (in some cases stopped), while the object planet doubles its forces, usually from nowhere. I then have to direct one ship to kill the expendable ship and phase jump again or order the phase jump again. When I try to invade a weaker enemy-player planet by engaging the stronger adjacent planet with forces, which potentially will provide forces to the weaker planet, the computer's answer is simple: eliminate them faster. I will let you know what happens.

Man, unless you're playing Unfair or higher(and even on unfair to some degree) there isn't one single strategy that works because as long as you expand quickly early on you can do pretty much anything you want. Just don't cripple yourself economically in the early game by expanding your fleet supply or having a bunch of planets with no population upgrades.

Post the whole replay this time so its possible to see how you started. One obvious thing you may be unaware of is that you can buy/sell resources on the black market. Use the 13000 extra credits you have to buy metal/crystal instead of just sitting in the bank. Of course, considering you also had 1000+ of each of those, I'd recommend just getting better at spending your money.

The ships the AI throws at you when you try to go on the offensive are pretty much always siege frigates. The AI had this behaviour for a long time already - if you throw a fleet at its planets, it may respond by throwing some siege frigates at your planets in order to try to get you to divert your forces from the offensive.

If you also happen to have a sufficiently large force in the gravity well the sieges arrived in, the AI may decide not to bombard your planet and turn away. This can be done with static defenses, but with 1.19, the sieges will try to find an undefended approach to your planet (or should you manage to cover all angles of approach, the least defended approach), so a task force that can deal with a handful of siege frigates is usually sufficient to make them turn back. They can also turn back if you destroy a few of their siege frigates - I've had cases where the AI has ordered its sieges to turn away after I destroy all but 1 or 2 sieges and they were 1 or 2 salvos away from finishing the planet.

I can guarantee you that the AI should not be conjuring ships from nowhere. Every non-strike craft vessel either came from a factory or from a ship/structure via an ability (Missile Batteries, Deploy Siege Platform, Replicate Forces, or Returning Armada). Given that your enemy is TEC, the only non-strike craft vessel they have that does not come from a factory are the Missile Batteries created from Sova Carriers, which are basically harder, but immobile long range frigates. As an aside, the other three abilities all belong to the Vasari, so those are of no concern in the scenario you're in.

Well the Armageddon arrived as expected and, of course, I lost. The game had decided to terminate and so, no matter what happens, it will terminate. I watched it closely. The AI forces were hardly affected, production of forces and resources were slowed down, as were phase jumps. The computer cheats and cheats and cheats. It has become a bit of a bore, at least on the small map.

I've read through this thread and it sounds like you're whining because you don't know how to win against the AI mw.  If you want help with understanding how to beat the AI, then post an entire replay of how you are being defeated from beginning to end.  What other people have said that you are getting behind the economic muscle of the AI which is playing TEC and then losing to superior forces is all that is happening.

The replay will be something similar to before. The AI always produces a dominating strategy. If you would like to post your winning games here, then I would be interested in viewing them for my own instruction.

There's a bit of a cause-and-effect going on here.  Faster colonization tends to allow you to build a stronger economy, which tends to allow you to build a bigger fleet.  If you can maintain an advantage in colonization for a substantial period of time (30 minutes should be sufficient on fast game speeds) it's actually very easy to be #1 in all aspects.



This is because you didn't have any units at these locations.  You can only observe a gravity well when your units are there (with a few exceptions, such as the "remote sensor" ability of the Arcova Scout), and you won't be updated on any changes unless you scout it again.  Because some of those planets hadn't been scouted in 50 minutes, your intel was simply not up to date.

As I said, you need to actively scout.  Once your scout leaves a gravity well, it goes "dark" and you cannot see what's going on there.




I'll review your replay and try to get you an answer.  The AI is actually notorious for its slow pace of colonization, so I suspect there's some issues going on.



By killing the planetary militia.  Neutral planets are defended by neutral military forces.  Unlike pirates, they will not attack other gravity wells, but they will still attempt to attack anyone who enters their territory.  Again, if the AI is colonizing faster it presumably is killing planetary militia faster to level up its capital ships.


I'm reviewing your replays; I will post more details once I am done.

Darvin: Can you post some of your winning games here? The best instruction is by your own example. If you do, let me know how to play them. I am not clear if the Trinity edition of Sins is different from the original Sins, or is just simply a patched up version. Losses in this game can always be justified by the complexity of the system, but that would be irrelevant, as the AI always wins, no matter what cunning or fiendish strategy is used. In this last game I had five planets under my control after half an hour to the enemy players three, but when I came to occupy the sixth only a short time later, the enemy players occupation had suddenly jumped to six. I have played many RTS games and can usually start winning after the third game. This is my 10th attempt without even a whiff of victory.

It took you a minute just to order your scout to begin exploration.  You didn't start producing military units for over two minutes.  You didn't send these units to a nearby planet until over five minutes had passed, and didn't actually colonize one of these planets for 15 minutes.  Essentially you got next to nothing done in the first 15 minutes while the AI was busy building its power base.

I'm going to take a video of me playing a game against the normal AI to demonstrate what I mean by speed, then post it to youtube.  Hopefully this should demonstrate my points quite succinctly.

Darvin3 : I appreciate that and will look at it when it is ready. I really need to see a winning game. I have looked hard on the Web with no results and my requests here are met with silence.

15 minutes to colonize, holy crap. Are you watching tv or something while you play? A soon as my game starts I am pushing forward and I never stop unless I am dead. To me 4x means X-pand X-pand X-pand X-pand. God help those in my path.

Ran into technical issues; will try again tomorrow.