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This is getting rediculous. I can't freaking beat the game! I've had it for almost a year, and every single time I play I loose miserably. I even crank all the settings to easy, and give myself all the boosts I can. I simply can't win. Just a min ago I lost while the attacking player (AI) had 2.0M while I had not even 300K score. what on earth is going on here? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

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First please read through the Newbie FAQ:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...31&fpart=1

Section 17 has a bunch of strategies.

Basically, in the beginning, concentrate on expansion and research of whatever supports your strategy. Expand, expand, expand. Try to get another colony tech as soon as you can. When you meet other empires, try to initiate at least a Trade Alliance while you fortify your borders. Mines are a great initial defense agains the AI. Eventually build fleets to "conduct military operations" in enemy systems to expand/conquer the AI empires. Read the section of the FAQ on the "Mega Evil Empire" because eventually agains the AI, you will become the MEE and the game seemingly will go from great to terrible in a couple of turns. Keep at it!

Slick.

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Sorry 'bout the poll ... but you left me no choice ... it took me a while, but eventually even I cracked the default AI with no bonus. Suggestions:
1). Minefields orbiting planets.
2). Plan out your research without the game running. Pick a couple of weapons and stick to it.
3). Watch your income every turn, even if it seems boring at first, learn what things cost, so you build responsibly and expand agressively. You need minerals, rad, research planets, intel planets and shipyard planets.
4). Design and build ships with a plan in mind. Don't just build 'cause you can.
5). Turn on all ministers. You should automatically beat the AI if you're all using the same AI, and you overide a stupid decision once and a while. And you;ll learn what you have to do to play the game.

What, specifically, happened in your latest game?

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Regarding Arkcon's tip #3, a rule of thumb: if a ship takes more than 0.4 years to build, you're going to pay more per turn in maintenance than you did just to build it, which is a nasty surprise... 0.8 years for a base since bases pay only half maintenance. Your mileage may vary depending on your racial maintenance aptitude score, of course http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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Do what slick and arkcon said to do. And in the future give us a third option so as not to degrade yourself. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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One thing you should notice is that the objective of this game shouldnt be to win it should be to play and have fun, If you honestly try to beat this game you will never win... The only way to win is by annilating every thing in sight-standard win. I honestly have only finished a total of one game against the AI and that was where I started blowing up every system not occupied by myself-star destroyer.

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Hmm. So your saying the game isn't meant to be won...? I don't get it. then why play if you just end up dieing halfway through? It gets very annoying... (Nothing, I didn't do anything stupid. they just tore me apart with their drednaughts and such. Seing as I only had destroyers, it wasn't much of a challnge for them.)

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Sounds like you must be making at least one MAJOR mistake. Hmm. Are you, perhaps, neglecting to build spaceports in new systems? Post a savegame where you are just starting to lose miserably, and I'll see if I can figure out why.

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No, he was saying that once he thinks he knows he has won, he stops playing, or starts destroying suns rather than conquering everything, because it takes a long time after the "climax", and without much expected challenge, to consolidate the whole quadrant.

If you keep losing, you haven't learned enough of the tricks that will guarantee a win. My suggestion would be to just employ a couple of good suggestions, since it's more interesting to play a challenging game than a cake walk, and once you learn enough of the tricks, you have to make yourself stop using them, or the AI won't be much challenge.

PvK

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Yeah, I'll post a savegame tomarrow.

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Gee, you mean I'm not the only one who hasn't beat this game yet? LOL Well, that is good the hear. Thanks for cheering me up.

Cheers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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Haha, Noooo problem. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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There is a lot to learn. I remember one of my first mistakes..thinking I only needed one shipyard in each system.

A lot of 4X games are the same (kind of) in that research is the key to the win. That and a strong economy. If you have that, a fleet to be reckoned with will come.

I agree with Atrocities...another choice would have been nice on the poll. Just because you are having a hard time beating the game doesn't mean you're an idiot. It probably means you haven't understood the importance of some things you need to do (yet).

How many games have you played?

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Personally I always set Victory Conditions like Player has X% of 2nd place empire and has researched X% of the tech tree. I usually set both fairly high (1st on 150-200% and second 80-100%) which means the game still is challenging, but you have goals to work towards other than the annihilation of all other life in the galaxy.

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Are you playing against the standard AI's? Or do you have something like TDM AI's installed? I've got to the point where AI's are completely simple unless they are TDM AI's.

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I have played dozens of games. And I was only first 1 time, and it only Lasted a few turns, and was because I used cheat codes. What I do is, give myself +20% research, +5% all the resorces, +10% shipyard rate, and organics and temporal techs. All I do for the first 20 turns is research, and colonize. I am always the most advanced race there is, but I'm usually around 8th place. I never have any units, and always have very little resources compared to the AI, thats where most the score difference is. (I don't have an AI mod, its standard. Only mod I have is STM)

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Ships and stations provide the bulk of any score so that may be why your score is lower than you expect if you're not building many of them.

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I say mod your own AI. There was one AI that was very hard to beat. An AI Challenge was issued and as far as I can recall, it was never beaten. Do any of you recall who made that AI?

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What about maintenance reduction?

Every +1% you put in gives you a 5% discount on your ships.

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Wasn't it not an AI, but the AI Campaign mod on some certain settings? High bonus with lots of AIs or something. Any single SE4 AI can always be beaten (assuming it is not a heavily cheating AI with lots of super powerful AI-only devices (which AIC is not...)), given enough time...

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Here's some dumb things I did when I first started playing:

- I thought you needed a spaceport on every planet. You only need one in each system (unless you take the "Natural Merchant" trait which means you never need any spaceports)

- I also thought that 1 spaceyard per system was enough. That isn't enough. Read the FAQ in section 17 on "economic harmony".

- I had a rude awakening when the first Psychic AI used an Allegiance Subverter on my ships. Beware of these. Some AI's use them pretty well. They steal your ships.

- I lost a really big fleet to a minefield before I realized that the AI likes to mine warp points. Make minesweeping ships.

- I learned the hard way that Point Defense Cannons are essential against an enemy that uses missiles or fighters. They are good against drones and sats too but these generally aren't that much of a headache.


Slick.

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I would expect your problem to be expansion; an aggressive expansion is mandatory in the game, though the AI does not usually shine at it.

The rough guideline on expansion is to go as fast as possible, and then a bit quicker than that. Having twice as many planets as the current turn number would be a good start (so 100 planets on turn 50), though certainly not the easiest thing in the world to achieve.

You should use your first colony ships to expand forward, two or three systems away from your home, if not farther away. Ideally, you will have one or two spaceyards on these places a bit after turn 10, and will be able to produce other colony ships to further expand your area of control. You should only develop your economy as needs arise in this stage of expansion; a few facilities should be all that you will need to fuel this first wave.

The main purpose of an outward expansion is to control as many systems as possible, and/or to establish an easily defended border. For example, if there are only two systems through which an Empire can attack you, defence should be much easier than if you had ten systems to defend at once. Once you have established this perimeter, developping your colonies will be much easier. Mines make the perfect defence against early raids; these require you to research Construction, and then Mines (at least up to level I).

The above was very generic advice, as a typical gamefile would help to see the problems of your Empire, and I am reluctant to tell you too much at once (both to leave you discover part of the game, and because a lecture on economics would not exactly be easy to assimilate in a few minutes).

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Well... Usually I turn mines off, and mainly focus on colonizing all the planets in my starting systems. I don't usually go far. Maybe 1 or 2 systems. then I research other colony techs, and colonize all the planets there. No good?

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Very bad strategy. You should always keep colonizing new systems until there are no unclaimed systems left, and you should do it quickly so as many of them are yours as possible. I think you may also be researching the other colony techs too soon. They are very expensive at 500000 research points each, and should not be researched until you can either do it quickly (I'd say 3-4 turns each max) or you have no important techs left to research that aren't also rather expensive (depends on the situation and the specific tech, but I'd say typically around 200000, though sensors and combat support 3 at 225000 are an exception).

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Thats another thing. These neural networks or whatever, and those ship training and fleet training things, I never use them. I rarely waste points on sensors either.

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No wonder why you are getting destroyed so easily. Training and sensors are the best options for your ships. They vastly improve your ships ability to hit enemy targets. Without them by the middle stages of the game, your ships will rarely hit their targets while being struck by enemy fire almost 100% of the time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

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Combat sensors and ECM are CRITICALLY IMPORTANT techs. NEVER neglect them (unless you have the talisman; then you can ignore sensors, but ECM is still a must-have). Training facilities aren't as important, but they're still very powerful.

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Hmm... that kinda stuff seems stupid though. It just seems like it doesn't do anything, and takes to much time. Are you sure your not delusional? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

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Quite sure. Let me put it this way, which would you rather have: you hit with 20% of your shots and 80% of enemy shots hit you; or you hit with 80% of your shots and 20% of enemy shots hit you? Sensors and ECM alone can easily make the difference between those two scenarios, and training on top of that could conceivably make it 99% and 1%, especially if you get stealth and scattering armor 3 for an extra 30% defense bonus.

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Hmm... Well, it can't hurt to try I guess. (I still think your a bit loony... lol) Oh, and can you tell me the best race/advanced traits and stuff to getin the star trek mod?

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I haven't play STM, so I can't give you much advice on it. One thing I do know is that it reduces the power of sensors and ECM so they aren't quite so important. For the stock game, though, try this:

Start a new game with high tech start. Design your favorite ship without combat sensors and ECM. Make a copy of that design with combat sensor 3, ECM 3, stealth armor 3, and scattering armor 3, taking off whatever you consider least important to make room. You can also try it without the armors. Go into the simulator and simulate a battle between equal numbers of the two designs. Observe which side wins and by how much. Maybe then you'll see what I mean.

Edit: For maximum effect, set the second design's strategy to Maximum Weapons Range. Leave the sensorless design at Optimal Firing Range, or even change it to Point Blank (max range would be suicidal for such a poorly equipped ship).

Edit2: You're not using missiles, are you? Missiles in the stock game are quite weak past the very early game, and are very easily countered by point defense cannons. They also are unaffected by sensors, so they would render this little experiment meaningless.

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Ok. I'll do that and se what happens.

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Oh... I se. The ship with all the good stuff took hardly any damage, even though it had much less armor and weapons.... Ok, so what tech areas in standard game should I use? Like, organics? religous? should I give a research bonus?

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If you build a fleet of half a dozen battle cruisers, use the training facility to get up to 20%, retrofiting to the best sensor/ECM and other components as you discover them while training is in progress, that fleet will completely pwn anything the AI can throw at you.

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What do you mean retrofiting? Why not just build them with the best sensors in the first place?

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You mean racial traits? Fyron wrote a pretty good article about min/maxing your empire design available here. The one thing I don't agree with in it is that lowering farming and refining aptitudes below 80% isn't usually worth the cost IMO. For racial tech traits, it largely depends on the player what you should take, but religious and crystalline are very powerful. In fact, religious is often Banned in multiplayer because it's TOO powerful.

For what techs to research in the game:
Weapons: early game, projectile weapons only; mid game, phased-energy weapons (requires physics 2) are excellent; late game, energy stream weapons (requires physics 1) are flat out the best straight damage dealing weapon in the game once everyone has phased shields. Also research point defense weapons (requires military science 1) to deal with anyone who might be using missiles or fighters. Special damage type weapons, like the shield depleter or ionic disperser, can also be useful.

Other combat tech: ship construction is very important - get at least level 4 fairly quickly for the large mount. Shields are good, but if you're going up against phased-polaron beams they'll be useless until level 6. As discussed earlier, sensors and combat support are crucial. High-level armor (requires chemistry 1) is also good, and allows level 1 cloaking (stealth armor) as an extra benefit. Advanced military science (requires military science 2) is important for training facilities, and also gives the cheapest to research cloak detection sensors.

Other military-oriented techs with no direct combat effect: better space yards tech can greatly decrease build times, but it's expensive to research. Repair is important if you plan to do a lot of retrofitting, and it's also a good idea to have at least one repair ship accompanying your fleets.

Economic techs: minerals extraction 2 is valuable, but hold off on 3 for a while and don't bother with 4 and above unless you REALLY have nothing better to do. Computers (requires industry 1) are quite valuable, and as a side benefit can provide immunity to alliegance subverters. Applied research 2 can give a nice boost, but don't get it too early. Troops (requires construction 1) can easily negate the penalty of taking 50% happiness (5 small troops with nothing but a cockpit on each planet will do it - more is better), allowing you to gain an extra 800 race points for other stuff without a significant penalty if you don't wait too long to research them.

Racial techs: If you took Deeply Religious, forget about sensors research; you have something much better - the Talisman. Get religious tech level 4 as soon as you can without handicapping yourself in other areas too severely. This will get you the religious talisman, which gives your ships a 100% hit rate regardless of other factors. If you think you'll have time to get it before getting into any serious wars, you can drop aggressiveness to 75% in race setup for lots of free race points with no penalty once you get the talisman.

If you took Crystalline, research crystalline technology to get crystalline armor. Lots of crystalline armor with just one or two good shield generators can render ships nearly invincible. Ignore crystalline weapons unless fighting another crystalline race, as the armor-skipping property of crystalline weapons will avoid triggering the special ability of crystalline armor.

If you took Organic Race, organic weapons are somewhat inferior to other choices for damage efficiency, but they are uniformly cheap in minerals and radioactives, which allows faster build times. Organic technology is also good for organic armor for a while, but it's real benefit is the population growth facilities. Get organic tech 6 and watch your population soar with Replicant Center III's adding 40M population to every planet every turn. Expensive, but well worth it eventually.

Psychic Race - good for alliegance subverters and system-wide training facilities, but not worth the cost IMO. Alliegance subverters can be countered by master computers, and regular training facilities are good enough for my purposes.

Temporal Race - Temporal weapons excel at taking down shields, but they cost a LOT of radioactives. It takes a lot of research, but temporal technology eventually gives temporal space yards, a 50% improvement over regular space yards at max tech. They take longer to build, though, and you can't upgrade from a regular space yard to a temporal one - you have to scrap and rebuild.

Edit: About retrofitting. Retrofitting has two uses: upgrading obsolete ships, and reducing build times. The first is obvious, the second is explained below:

Say you have a ship that takes two turns to build.
Standard approach: build ship in two turns, send to training center, wait, send to front lines.

Retrofitting approach: design another Version of the ship with only what you can build in one turn, and another with what you can add by retrofitting the one-turn-build design (calculate 50% cost difference). Build ship in one turn, send to training center, retrofit twice, wait a turn less and have the space yard build another in the mean time, send to front lines. With bigger ships that take 3, 4, or more turns to build, this approach can have the ship ready several turns earlier than it would be normally, and free up the space yard to build a lot more of them. It costs a little bit extra resources, though, but not a huge amount.

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Ok, so take religous and christalline, then just add the rest of the points to what? intelligence for a research bonus, or spaceyard bonus? or maybe another advanced trait?

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Wrong. Training facilities are just as critical. You can get a maximum of 60% from CS and ECM. You can get a maximum of 40% bonus to both from training facilities. If both races have CS III and ECM III, and only one race trained their ships and fleets, the fleets with the training will generally decimate the untrained enemy fleets, with nary a scratch (assuming other factors are relatively equal).

You can even use training to fill a gap in CS and ECM techs, assuming the enemy is not more advanced in both CS/ECM and training techs...

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Advanced Storage, Hardy Industrialists, defensiveness (not aggressiveness - useless with the talisman), maintenance bonus, space yard bonus, research bonus, minerals bonus. Read the article I linked to. Specify a number of race points, galaxy size, and number of AI's, and I'll post what I consider to be a very good empire design when I get off work.

Edit: 40% vs 60% certainly seems less important to me. It also takes longer to get the full benefit of training than CS and ECM (ignoring research time).

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Be aware that Crystalline tech is not very useful until you get large ships, on the order of dreadnaughts. Then, you can use 11 or more crystalline armor IIIs to make ships that are practically immune to low damage per shot weapons, and can withstand a huge amount of firepower from higher damage per shot weapons... The crystalline weapons are generally only good against armor-heavy races, such as organic and crystalline races. Normal races, not so useful against... The crystalline facilities are of dubious use.

Religious facilities, other than Nature Shrines, are mostly defensive in nature. If you are fighting your wars in your territories, you are doing something wrong to begin with... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Nature Shrines can, in the long run, really pay off from increasing the planetary values of all of your planets from a single facility in each system. Fate shrines are practically useless... Talismans take a lot of research to develop. Especially in multiplayer games, you have to be very careful in the early game.

Read the min-maxing article that Douglas linked to. It will tell you. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Just be aware that, especially with organics, lowering your organic and radioactive aptitude characteristics below 80 is generally worth it. Races without the Organic Manipulation trait use practically no organics, so your points are better spent being moved into minerals aptitude. Radioactives are used more, but still nowhere near the usage levels of minerals... Generally, you don't want to reduce it quite as much as organics aptitude.

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5000 race points, large cluster, and high number AI's (Usually 18-20 I think)

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That's with neutral AI's and no AI bonus, right?

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But it is 40% versus _0_... ECM and CS being equal, that 40% advantage in both defense and offense is a hugely massive advantage. I can not stress that enough... Even a 20% advantage in both CS and ECM, representing just one tech level of advantage in both areas, is a huge advantage, given the importance of combat bonuses. Find a planet with moons. Build training facilities on the planet and the moons. 9% training per turn. Only takes 3 turns to complete the training...

Also, make sure to always take at the very minimum 120% in both racial aggressiveness and defensiveness traits. The extra 5% to get to 125% is generally not worth the cost, except possibly in 5000 point games... Berzerker culture is most certainly the best culture, as the 10% bonus to combat offense and defense is a very, very important edge to have, or a difficult disadvantage to overcome if you do not have it... Merchant culture, combined with 115% maintenance aptitude, can sometimes compete, if you can get enough ships built to take advantage of your very low maintenance rates to overwhelm the combat-bonus oriented empire designs. Make sure to still take that 120% aggressiveness and defensiveness though... Temporal Technology helps with this empire design, as you can get ships built much more quickly, to help in the overwhelming numbers cause.

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I was comparing CS and ECM vs. training, not training vs. no training.

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My only comments would be to re-iterate what Slynky said:

If your destroyers are up against dreadnaughts, you're seriously behind the expansion/research curve. Higher tech weapons / components / ships rule!!!!

And the part about training, I too consider training to be vital to any sucessful campaign.

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Well of course you develop both of them as soon as you can... Training is a lot cheaper to research than CS III and ECM III... Training + CS I and ECM I is also cheaper to research than CS III and ECM III, and gives the same net bonuses. It also gives you a head start on the training bonuses...

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Yes, neutral races and no AI bonus. Actually, I started a new game with some of you people strategies. Let me se how it works before you waste any more time on me lol

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Here it is (.emp file attached in zip):
(general details, I just picked the first in each list)
Environment: rock/methane (breathers for this atmosphere are rare - you'll have an easier time finding breathers of other atmospheres to capture)
Culture: Berzerkers, of course
Physical Strength: 50%
Intelligence: 120%
Cunning: 80%
Environmental Resistance: 51%
Reproduction: 109%
Happiness: 100%
Aggressiveness: 80%
Defensiveness: 120%
Political Savvy: 50%
Mining Aptitude: 120%
Farming Aptitude: 80%
Refining Aptitude: 80%
Construction Aptitude: 121% (had some points left over for that Last 1%)
Repair Aptitude: 82% (with berzerkers penalty is exactly 80%)
Maintenance Aptitude: 120%
Advanced Traits: Advanced Storage Techniques, Hardy Industrialists, Deeply Religious, Crystallurgy

This race absolutely depends on the Talisman to have effective ships using direct fire weapons. I would advise you to use missiles until you get the Talisman. Once you do, use only direct fire weapons, and always set your combat ships' strategy to maximum range.

This race has a sufficient construction rate bonus to emergency build colonizers in one turn on the homeworld. Do so for the first 11 turns unless you really need something else pronto. Send at least the first few out exploring (don't forget to load population first). In general, if you don't know of a good planet to colonize, send the colonizer exploring unless you're certain it won't find anything unclaimed.

I strongly suggest building a space yard on every planet you colonize, usually as the Last facility in the queue. Colonize at least one or two tiny or nonbreathables early on to take over for when your homeworld starts slow build.

OT: why does the forum allow attaching .exe's but not .emp's?

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It normally takes two turns to build a colonizer right? So what we need is 1.5x = 2, which means x = 2/1.5 = 4/3, which is one third. Therefore, you need around 133%, lets make it 135% for easy to remember.

Get hardy industrialists. +25% build rate. use racial points to pump up build rate to 110%. You have 135% build rate, the minimum to build a colonizer in one turn with emergency build.

Brian

Brian

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Actually, 12% construction bonus is enough to do it with a good starting planet. 32% is needed for average. The race I posted has well over that at 44%.