Please Help a n00b
 

Hey guys, I've been playing SEIV for about a week now, and its starting to get really frustrating. It's almost to a point were I just don't want to play anymore.

Here's my problem, I've tried a good few strats, the tutorial strategy start, a couple of my own things, and on my current game I did the old build a ton of colonisers and grab half the quadrant.

All have failed. Now, that wouldn't be a problem, but my Last game I poured about 30 hours into 2 days of playing before I was wiped out, that bummed me hard. The situation was I was at war with one race, fair enough, I was at a partnership with another, and found a nice system to colonise over the other side of the map, so I sent a ship on its merry way, next thing you know this race declares war on me... I was thinking "Why?!" and because the majority of my ships were on the other side of my borders I was at a loss to bring them back in time.
"Ok" I thought, I just won't go through another race's territory.

The current game I'm on involving the massive colonisation was going really well up until Last night, when, out of nowhere, all 3 races declared war on me at once for being "Too big".

What the hell is that about? I was already at war with another race and was at a partnership with another one, military alliance with the 3rd. Next thing I know I'm fighting a war on all fronts and getting me *** handed to me.

That's a fecked up bit of diplomacy there, the other races were supposed to fear my hugeness, not decide to go on their merry way and attack me for no reason.

So... I've read the FAQ's, and still at a loss as to what to do, I know things like ship building will get better in time (I'm still losing to smaller ships 1v1 no matter how I kit them out).

Please give me some real newbie tips, this game is what I have been looking for in a VERY VERY long time, after I stopped playing Civ 3, this seems so much better, apart from diplomacy.

Cheers guys

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

Welcome to SE4.

You really need to read the "Frequently Asked Questions for Newbies", it was created by skilled people exactly for these situations.

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...;f=23;t=009760

As for your ships, one 1 on 1, you may loose or not, depending on the situation. You gave very few details, so I can't tell.

However, read that faq, it explains quite a few things about how work the game.

Once you'll have mastered the game, and beating the AI will become boring, go to PBW to fight some of us.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

simple solution?
play againsed humans http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

http://seiv.pbw.cc

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

once you reach a certain size, 250% bigger than an ai empire, i think, it always declare's war on you. check settings.txt in the data folder under 'mega evil empire'.

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

From Newbie FAQ:

13.1 Mega Evil Empire (MEE)
13.1.1 Settings.txt governs if & how MEE is used. Basically, if used, this system tries to limit an empire from running away quickly and winning the game. If a player is declared MEE, all AI’s will declare war on that player. A human or an AI can be the MEE. It does this by comparing the #1 player’s score with an absolute value and to the #2 player’s score. With default values, a human player becomes MEE when his score is 500k and is 170% of the next highest player. It is a little more forgiving on AI’s since they won’t be MEE until their score is 250% of the #2 player. New players are sometimes unaware of this and can’t understand why a game is going great and then suddenly the whole galaxy appears to turn on him. This is why.

Briefly, the AI sucks in SE4. As you have noticed it can declare a war without a reason.

The key to win is expansion. Expand as much as possible and research mines for early defence. Then research components required for your basic ship, light cruiser. A light cruiser equipped with four large mounted phased polaron beams, one or two point defence cannons, ECM, combat sensors and some armor are effective. Also remember to train your ships! Do not attack without 20% ship and 20% fleet experience and enough mine sweepers.

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

Thanks for the help guys, in regard to me not giving many details on 1v1 battles, here it is:

I nearly always loose. My Cruiser would 90% of the time loose to a light cruiser, no matter what the hell I equip it with, I've run tons of simulated tests and I usually win those, but in the crunch, I loose.

BTW, in the simulator I usually try to fight 1 v 2 or 1 v 3 to know that if I can take out at least one ship, I should be able to win against most odds.

I will try Asmala's ship loadout, and haven't trained my ships at all so I will definately do that.

I haven't used mines either but keep hearing it mentioned. The reason for this is I want to expand as much as possible, and laying mines could restrict that, also it would be a waste of resources.
Would a good idea to get to a certain point, not too far out from my home system and just keep those border for a good while?

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

Oh, and I copied the entire FAQ into note pad and saved it the other day for reference.

I won't be starting again tonight because I have to get up early tomorrow to go out for a couple of days and if I start a new game I won't get to bed 'til 5am again, not good for Christams morning...

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I would advise people to get tired of beating the standard AI before letting them get stomped by humans. It's bad enough without having to endure simulatneous play, too.

I would advise the same thing I did in MOO and MOO2: Play the easy levels, then move up as you learn more. Pretty soon, you'll learn the basic tricks and strategies.

THEN come in and play some humans http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif . I thought I was pretty good till I did that. I even played a lot of email games but only with one person. I still remember the first KOTH game I played against the Primitive Hoards http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif ! Talk about a stomping! But I've come a long way since then.

Good luck! It's one of the best strategy games made...don't give up on it.

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

Your mines will never hurt your ships. They only interfere with enemy ships (allies do not get hit by minefields). So, deploying mines is not going to restrict your expansion at all. Even just 1 or 2 turns of mines launched over each planet as the first thing they build will help a lot. A few transports loaded with mine layers can ferry mines out to the borders and launch them. They are certainly not a waste of resources.

What bonus are you giving to the AI? If you have them at a bonus, try giving them no bonus.

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

Welcome to the forum CareyB,

We all have been in your position as we learned to play the game.

Have you been using mounts? On ships of 400 KT and larger you gain access to weapons mounts that dramtically improve the range or power of your weapons. (Design window upper right hand side MOUNTS)

Lean that Phased Poloron Beams are your best friends. Physics 2, then start researching Phased weapons. The AI really does not defend against them earily on.

Point defense weapons. These shoot down incoming missles, fighters, and satellites.

Specialize your ships, have one class use nothing but PPB, and PDC. (Phased Poloron Beams, Point Defense Cannons) Then another uses Torpedos max, and say Depleted Urainum Cannons as an example.

Research Military Science and then Advanced Military Science to gain access to both Ship and Fleet training facilities. Then build them and fleet your ships at those worlds and their experiece points will grow. This will give you a tactical advantage against the AI.

Always deploy mines and Weapon Platforms to your planets. The AI will avoid attacking them for a good while. Deploy the mines first, then build WP. The reason for this is mines take up cargo space on a planet, and once you deploy them, your cargo storage is back to zero thus leaving you room to build weapon platforms (WP's)

Mining your Warp Points is useful as well, but the AI, most AI that is, will research Mines early on and will plow through your mine fields with little problems.

There is a strategy article or thread floating about the forum, and I think there is a link to it in both the Frequently asked Questions sticky and the Important info sticky.

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

Hi, CareyB. Are you playing your game in turns or simultaneous? If in turns, do you use strategic combat or tactical? Simultaneous games won't let you do tactical, but you can click the replay combat button when you get a combat log report, to see what happened in the combat, and try to figure out what went wrong.

Dropping mines in warp-points as you expand helps slow down any hostiles who might try to follow you home, at least until they start researching mines themselves and using minesweepers.

I hate the Evil Empire thing, but you can easily switch it off in settings.txt - just open it in a text editor, do a Find for evil, then change the value for "AI Uses Mega Evil Empire" from True to False.

Picking strategic systems to defend is important, controlling routes into your most developed systems - even better is to try to keep the fighting in the other guy's real estate.

I'm pretty much of a newbie, too. One thing that has worked well for me (against AI at least) is to research fighters as early as I can, and then base most of my combat ships on the Light Carrier until I have researched my way up to something better. The Light Carrier is big enough to let you use a good mount for your direct fire weapons (to increase range and damage), plus even if you only go with the minimum required number of fighter bays that gives you room for 28 small fighters. The Light Carrier can even be a pretty decent assault ship for planetary invasions, loading up with shields, PD, and a couple of cargo bays to add capacity in addition to what you get from the fighter bays (I usually cram these so full of troops that they don't have room for any fighters, but the bays are still there to give you some flexibility if you don't need a full load of troops).

Hope this helps.

SpaceBadger

PS: Merry Christmas, y'all! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

CaryB, welcome to the forums. This is a great place. The people are friendly, knowledgeable and very helpful.

Mele Kalikimaka.

Slick.

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

An idea, try to avoid creating partnerships with aliens - for the reason that once they see your colonies, they're almost sure to declare a war on you pretty soon. Its a problem with almost every single AI that had only recently been identified.

Also, are you playing with bonuses? If you do, try first playing without the bonuses. Even experienced players often find medium bonuses, with good AI's, a challenge.

What AI's are you using? Any mods?

And, welcome to the forums!

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

i am generally too lazy to manage mine layers, so i usually just launch mines over planets. they are cheap, dont cost any resources to maintain, and can be constructed and deployed very quickly. not as effective as using wormholes as chokepoints, but alot easier.

you might try taking advantage of cloaking. ARMOR level 4 gives you access to cheap stealth armor, which provides a low level of cloaking, that does not drain any supplies. The AI does not defend against it very well, and it will let you strike at their core planets and bypass their fleets.

It took me a while before i found out about MOUNTS, (the button seems to be invisible, unless you know that its there) and they really do make all the difference. in the un-modded game, there is no reason to ever not use them.

Try turning off the Mega Evil Empire setting, as described below. Also try lowering the AI bonus, as described. Dont lower the AI difficulty, as it makes the AI even dumber and gameplay becomes totally predictible and monotanous.

but even on high AI difficulty, one of their biggest drawbacks is that they dont make the most effective use of FLEETS. the first rule of fighting, in any circumstance, is not to fight fair. your fleets should be bigger than theirs, which should be very possible given that it sounds like you have no problem developing your industrial foundation. Fleets also allow you to gain 'fleet experience' which stacks with your 'ship experience'

and speaking of things stacking - a quick note on ship design: you cant have multiple ECM, it does no good. but you CAN have 1 ECM, 1 stealth armor, and 1 scattering armor. there is no real reason to have multiple pieces of stealth or scattering armor, as its not as effective as regular armor, and a single piece gives you the bonus.

about racial technology, there are lots of tatics with these, and they will generally let you pound the AI to pudding. here are a couple:

Organic tech is great. if you research organic tech to get organic armor, you wont have to worry about researching shields or regular armor, unless you want the stealth / scattering bonus. you can use organic weapons, which include the "best" seeker weapon in the game, and have swarms of missiles that will overwhelm the point defence used by the AI. the Enveloping Acid Globule is nothing to sneeze at, especially on larger mounts. the greatest advantage, is that organic tech allows you to design ships that are ballanced 50% mineral cost and 50% organic cost, effectively halving their build time - since most ships are normally 95% minerals.

Religious technology. The talisman. it takes some research to get to, but your weapons will ALWAYS HIT. many people argue for or against it for various reasons, but if you want to get out there and kick some ***, this is one good way to do it. since your weapons will ALWAYS HIT, you can sit at max range with long range weapons, and the enemy's range penalties will make you a very hard target. did i mention the part about the weapons ALWAYS HITTING?

[ December 25, 2003, 21:05: Message edited by: Puke ]

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

Game set up and racial point allocation is as important as how you play the game. Puke makes some excellent points.

You can max your racial points as well. I think Fyron wrote a help page on this, but I have not been able to find it.

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

yes, he does have a min/max techniques article on his page

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

It is in the SE.net Tribune content Category on http://www.spaceempires.net/

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Higher level shields are a lot more powerful than organic armor. In fleet combats, ships usually get destroyed or crippled in a single round once they start getting fired upon, so you want as many raw hit points as you can get. OA doesn't get much of a chance to regenerate. Incidentally, this is what makes Shield Regenerators not very useful. Your ship has to survive for some 7 rounds (with the highest level) after starting to take damage for 2 shield regenerators to provide better defense than having a phased shield generator V instead.

[ December 26, 2003, 01:32: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Please Help a n00b
 

yes, high level phased shields might give a bit more strength than organic armor, but when you can have twice as many ships with the organics... with high tech levels you can have your cake and eat it too, but starting with lower levels or when rushed for construction, you have to prioritize. regardless, this probably isnt the place for such a debate.

Another tip is to guard your side of wormholes as a chokepoint. if you control the choke points, you can pretty much hold off the AI indefinitly. if you guard THEIR side of it, they can see your fleet and might build up one to match it. if you guard YOUR side, they cant see your fleet and will toss in more piecemeal forces. plus, guarding your side starts you out at close range and gives you the advantage of fireing first.

one advanced tactic is capturing planets instead of bombing them, which reduces the ammount of effort you need to put into your own infrastructure. capturing a fully developed planet saves alot of construction time, and capturing spaceyards and resupply depots gives you places to refuel and repair.

If you have time to develop loads of technology before a war, you can build dedicated repair and/or spaceyard ships, and supply ships with Quantum Reactors (no reason for every ship to have a Quantum Reactor, a single ship in the fleet is good enough) to support large fleets of fighting ships, and then basically sweep through and destroy everything in sight.

If you are using stelar manipulation, warp openers deep into enemy space let you strike anywhere anytime. also, building monolith facilities from the stelar manipulation research area will give you better long-term resource payoffs than simple resource extractors.

a simple tip for developing worlds is to stick a spaceyard on any planet that has more than 5 facility slots. it will save time when building expensive facilities like monoliths, or when upgrading large numbers of facilities when better technology is available.