New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

Hi guys, I'm an old MOO gamer and I'd heard that SEIV gold was an outstanding game so I got it and boy, I'm overwhelmed. I've found the beginning complexity of the game to be extreamly daunting and the computer AI to be ruthless. There's got to be a better way! So, I appeal to you veterans out there... Any tried and true hints? Any basic strategies to someone trying to figure this game out? What technologies are better to explore? Tactics to use? Any help would be gratefully appreciated. Please, I am a veteran gamer and I'm not looking to use cheat codes or such, just want to win fairly and give my people a chance to win before getting overwhelmed by the other empires.... As it stands right now, the other empires out colonize me and out fight me regularly, and it's been two weeks of being chewed up with style and I'd like to return the favor to the AI. Thanks again for the assist!

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

You may want to look through this thread: http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...;f=23;t=005518

early game throw a base space yard with a cap missile launcher on it or satellites (with missiles or guns in them) up to protect homeworld.

what tech depends on what floats your boat. Anti-proton beams or phased polaron are excellent weapons. reseach ecm and put one on each warship, sensors too.

pace yourself a bit...ie do not run out of resources...unless you have an organic based race concentrate on minerals & radioactive mining for resources..

if you REALLY feel hammered, research tech to get warp closing tech/components, build a warp closing ship and seal off your region of space...this is VERY expense, both in resources and shipyard time...

one more thing, make sure that colony ships have colonists on board before sending them off to colonize...either click on colony ship then the colonize button then click the planet to be colonized or load colonists by the upload cargo button then population button then plaent where the colonists to be picked-up are cloacted then click on the planet to be colonized..

just a few of the things you can do..

[ May 25, 2002, 16:07: Message edited by: pathfinder ]

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

Race creation:
Spend points to improve your maintenance reduction trait! It is very valuable, since this modifier SUBTRACTS directly from the 25% base maintenance rate.
A maintenance reduction of 20% will result in you paying 25-20 = 5% maintenance, and thus being able to support 5 times as many ships as the next guy.
Points in agression and defense will help your combat results, and may be what you need.

You can take points out of organics production, ground combat, and repair rate to pay for extra bonuses. In order to over come these deficiencies, you can trade the AIs for organics, send lots more troops if you ever do have a chance to invade, and either build an extra repair station or wait longer for repairs.
If your ships are all getting killed in combat, or surviving undamaged, you don't need to worry about repair rate much.

Weapons:
Missiles can keep you out of the enemy's weapons range in the very early game; use them on your first ships, but don't bother researching more than one or two levels in the tech.

Once Point Defense shows up, you will need direct fire weapons.
Projectile weapons are a good, inexpensive starting weapon tech, and they'll Last you a few years. They should give you enough time to research APB, of PPB as below.

In the unmodded game, bigger ships are better in every case except for crew subVersion.
Research ship construction to frigate on your first turn.

Defense:
Researching armor can provide a quick jolt of defense strength, but the tech levels end much too soon to be worthwhile for absorbing damage.
If you are being attacked by races with PPBs, armor may be your only hope, since Phased shields are pretty high in the tech tree.

Physics -> Shields will be very useful against most weapons, providing twice the strength per KT of size. They also rechage between every combat, no repairs required.

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

Shields are also worthless against -

1. Mines
2. Ramming
3. Warp Point damage

Hey, bud, I'm another old MOO gamer, although I've been playing SE4 for a bit over a year now.

MOO and MOM were awesome games. I wonder what the Barcias are coding these days? Gods, I hope they're not stuck doing some dreary console bull****...

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

Actually, shields are great when someone is ramming you.
They are useless when you are trying to ram someone else.

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

But Armor is.

Try to get Organic or Crystaline tech if you have the extra racial points or want to survive long: as they have the best armor for the most buck.

Armour 10Kt - 40Kt extra HP

Emmisive Armor 20Kt - 50Kt extra HP - Negates any damage inflicted that is less than 30 (About the worst armour available.)

Stealth Armor - 30 Kt - 100Kt extra HP - provides low level (But decent cloak as it doesnt use any supplies) and provides 15% extra defensive bonus (best deal IMHO if doesnt have access with racial techs)

Scattering Armor - 50Kt - 150Kt extra HP - provides protection from Long Range scanning and provides 15 Extra defensive bonus (Overkill IMHO)

Organic/Crystaline Armor - 30Kt - 150Kt Extra HP -organic regenerates 30/15? points per combat turn.
Crystaline channels 30% of damage to shields.
(Uberarmor - Best deal for Best protection)

[ May 25, 2002, 22:33: Message edited by: TerranC ]

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

If it has an orbit colonize it. Mines and Fighters are invaluable early on. Move population from home worlds to good colonies quick. Expand your population as quickly as possible. Never stop building colony ships. Putting mines on warp points and continuing to do so will give you the breathing space to build your Empire. Space yards on most planets. (will increase production on that planet even if idle)Industry+computers/robotic factories III = lots of production.

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hi, Leo--

The AI's will vary in capability and in having a relatively clear starting area or whether they have to fight early on, but at least one or two will tend to present a real challenge. :-) Also, note that you can give lots of small gifts of extra resources to another empire to make it happy with you, which means they are willing to be peaceful and make treaties rather than fight.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">With regard to defense against an attack, note that your best first line of defence are weapon platforms, because they are cheap and cost no resources (?) to maintain. Even a small WP (which the game abbreviates 'WS', I think) is 190kT of useful components, and you can fit quite a few even on small planets.

Research point defence as a maximum priority; it's good against seekers and fighters. Armor adds considerably to the useful lifespan of everything you build as it takes damage first, and is quick to research. Ditto shields. For weapons, if you can research fast, getting cap missiles V and saturating the enemy's PD with 'em will hold off quite a few AI attacks.

Getting even a WS with 2 lvl-5 PD, 10k of lvl-3 armor, two weapons, and a shield-- and building about half of each planet's cargo space with 'em should keep you going to around turn 100-150. Upgrade your units with every tech so that when you scrap old ones you don't scrap 5 of the same when you jettison cargo to make space for improved models. But don't do that unless you need to, of course.

My homeworld has 5600kT of weapon platforms (eight 400Kt WMs Mk1 - Mk6, 20 200Kt WS, Mks 1-8). That's 160 CSM's [about 100 lvl 3, 40 lvl 4, 20 level 5], around 20 PD (three per med WP), and a couple of beam weapons.

On the other hand, my primary competitors are the Colonials (w/ 680 units, mostly MF's but ouch! mines, too.) We had both filled up one cluster (about 8 systems, 12 planets) and had just planeted a colony in the other's cluster when we went to war. The AI's in the TDM modpack are getting quite good at design!

I'm winning, but it's just as well that race #3 is on the other side of a black hole and isn't pushing this way very effectively. They just exterminated what I thought was a respectably tough pair of LCs (three CSM-V's, 600pts of shield via ShG-Vs, four PD-Vs) with one LC armed with PD-Vs and various temporal lvl-3 weapons (TDB-IIIs for quad shield, and a large TS-III which skips armor/shield).

In other words, even against 2:1 odds, their ships are better than mine right now. I need to get better direct fire weapons and build a tougher front line before all of my missile LC's get toasted.

-Chuck

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

&gt;note that your best first line of defence are weapon platforms, because they are cheap and cost no resources (?) to maintain.

First and Last line of defense. Of course, platforms can't move so a few missle (Make sure you fit missle) escorts are invaluable.

&gt;and you can fit quite a few even on small planets.

1 on a domed tiny planet to much more.

&gt;Research point defence as a maximum priority; it's good against seekers and fighters. Armor adds considerably to the useful lifespan of everything you build as it takes damage first, and is quick to research.

It will also help you traverse dangerous warp points safely as your armor gets fragged first.

&gt;Ditto shields.

Inadvisable. In order to research shileds, you will need to research physics; which is 50000 RP. And after that, by the time you have decent shileds, people start to get Phased Polaron Beams, which overpower most midlevel Anti-Proton Beams and skip shileds. Try to focus on Armor first then shileds once people start getting decent direct fire weapons.

&gt;Upgrade your units with every tech so that when you scrap old ones you don't scrap 5 of the same when you jettison cargo to make space for improved models.

You CANNOT upgrade units. You CANNOT scrap units.
What you can do is jettison them.

Well, that's enough nitpicking.

[ May 25, 2002, 22:43: Message edited by: TerranC ]

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

In the MOO games, a colony ship took a long, long time to build. But in Space Empires IV, they are essentially free. When you start the game, you would do well to build a space station with a space yard as the first thing you build. Then, start cranking out tons and tons of colony ships. You should be building colony ships throughout the game. If you don't have at least one being built and another on its way to colonize some planet, then you aren't expanding fast enough.

I am a fighter fanatic. Fighters are great because you don't pay maintenance on them. They are great for both offense and defense. In the early game, they are killer against races that build ships with just missiles. Later in the game, you can have an effective military that is easily twice the power of every other empire combined but NOT trigger MEE because units are not included in the score calculation. This makes fighters an extremely worthwhile investment.

When you consider which enemy to attack first, look at their race properties and figure out what atmosphere they breathe. If your race's homeworld is rock and oxygen, then you can only colonize rock worlds and only get the full number of facilities if the planet has an oxygen atmosphere. This means that if you find a huge world with 150% minerals that has a Carbon Dioxide atmosphere, you are NOT going to be able to build the full 25 mineral miners. Instead, you have a domed colony and only get 5 mineral miners.

But let's say that a nearby enemy AI breathes Carbon Dioxide. Then, you would do well to capture one of his planets with troops and transplant those CO2 breathers to your huge CO2 world. When you take the Last one of your Oxygen breathers off the colony, it is no longer domed. Voila! You now get to use all 25 of those facility slots on the planet.

Oh, another thing about fighters: you can build them on any planet. You can build them on all planets. Hopefully, you will always have a surplus of minerals. Don't build a storage facility. Instead, tell several of your planets close to the front lines to build fighters.

If you expand fast enough to grab enough systems before the other empires colonize them, then I think a good plan is to turnaround when you see a juicy planet in a system that already has colonized planets from another empire. It seems like colonizing a planet in a system already claimed by another empire is a sure way to get them to declare war on you early.

There is a big difference between Space Empires IV and MOO because of the wormholes. In MOO, you pretty much had to establish defences on all your planets. But in SEIV, you can and should try to establish chokepoints where your focus all your forces. Ideally, you want to keep those down to as few as possible. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

BTW, have you downloaded the TDM ModPack and TampaGamer's Sounds yet? I wouldn't play the game without them.

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That's alright-- and it's entirely possible that the Sagella are about to kick my butt with their temporal ships, too. :-)

If you do have a small planet and wish to upgrade it's defenses, as you say, you can't upgrade the WP's so you have to replace them.

Anyway, my point was that you shouldn't build a bunch of the same type of WP on a planet, because you can only jettison them all at once in v1.67. Creating lots of different Versions (even different names with the same components, ie, swp1a & swp1b) lets you work around that.

-Chuck

PS: It looks like some people are using RCS for Version management. CVS...?

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

Leo ... I'm an old MOO & MOM gamer myself, & I have just started w/ this game. The AI is a lot less fearsome than it seems at first glance. The most dangerous point for you is early in the game. An Orbital Ship yard in the first 5-10 turns is a must, & to be truthful, I have found WPs a waste of time. Your big advantages should be numbers, & then choke points if you are hard pressed. Get the numbers..load your initial ships to the gills w/ weapons, don't bother with larger mounts, & when you have a battle... go "tactical" & break up your fleet. The AI will go for your big ship or a wounded one & you can use this to benefit your play.

I haven't given the AI any bonuses yet, as I am not sure what this means.. you might want to avoid this also. Usually it doesn't mean that the AI plays better, but it just comes at you with more of everything.

On your home planet, after your have your minerals built up in your "natural" storage, go ahead & scrap a mineral miner & replace it with research. In fact, prioritise research over about everything else.. when building facilities. Aside from getting the frigate class of ship, & bigger, badder DUCs & missiles, your research priorities are your own.

If a race is not threatening & does not share your initial atmosphere or planet type.. go ahead & make peace. If they are not soreheads, they go for trade & better on treaties.. pretty easily. You can always soften them up by gifting them a 1000kt of Organics or even Radioactives.

Don't forget to build a resupply depot in every system that is likely to see heavy traffic, & build a space port, right after it... as you receive NO benefits from that system.. in resources, research & Intel.. until a port is built in that system.

Once you get past the early part & establish yourself..it's a piece of cake.

take care... Dog

P.S. you can scrap fighters & sats if you have them in orbit around a planet with a shipyard.

[ May 26, 2002, 03:07: Message edited by: Dogberry ]

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Low AI bonus = 2x production
Medium AI bonus = 3x
High AI bonus = 5x

The net effect is that the AI builds more ships with better tech.

High AI difficulty = AI uses all ministers
Medium AI difficulty = turns off some ministers
Low AI difficulty = turns off more ministers.

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Also, from the times when I was testing the random race generator, remember that the random race generator doesn't use all the available racial points, if you don't pick High AI difficulty.

[ May 27, 2002, 01:49: Message edited by: Master Belisarius ]

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

If the AI doesn't use the Ministers.. then what does it use ? I assume the production bonuses are across the board.. resources, research.. intel .. everything . This might explain why the AI demolishes the capacity of a planet so quickly in Finite Resource Games. My guess is that this production multiplier wiould be of marginal use in certain respects unless the productivity of each planet.. orbital yard .. etc. was also increased, as the bonus points, especially minerals.. would be "lost in space" .

If this is true... the "natural" storage capacity of the AI ought to be doubled or tripled, from that of the human player.

Dog

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Actually, I think it's more common for an AI to stall on production because it can't pay any more maintenance. The bonuses make it take longer before this occurs.

I don't actually know which ministers are turned off; I'm just repeating what I've seen posted here. My first guess would be things like the Population minister, so on the lowest difficulty, the AI wouldn't shuffle population around, for example.

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

Capnq.. this is what I have observed. Many of the AI's "mining" planets & its Homeworld are at 0 minerals .. while it's observable fleet consists of a half dozen light & regular cruisers, a couple of pop transports & a orbital yard or 2. I easily keep a fleet 4 or 5 times the overall weight of the AI & none of my main mining planets are zeroed out.

It might well be that the Finite Resources Game is sort of an AI killer itself.

Dog

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, AI can not play Finite resources at all.
The main problem is that there is only one set of AI files which is used in all possible game setups. Since SE IV AI is tuned to "normal" resource game, it follows the same route even when you play "finite" and swiftly runs out of resources. No AI should ever be used in any finite resources game, IMHO.

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

Oleg..Took your advice & that of others here & started a new game w/ regular resources & moderate AI bonus & the difference is striking. You are really under the gun if you know that eventually your opponents will be coming at you with twice the weight & what's worse, twice the tech, if you sit still for too long.

Think that I will scale back to low ( x2 ) bonus though. X3 just shoves your game a long to the point, where your choices are limited & you are forced to be real agressive.

Really looking forward to the TDM mod, when I get to it.

Dog

[ May 30, 2002, 09:08: Message edited by: Dogberry ]

Re: New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?
 

Here is a mid to late game hint. Especially useful before going to war. Start building ships in your ship yards. When they are only one turn from completion click the queue on hold button. This will stop the yard from using recourses but you will be one turn away from a finished ship if you need it. Great for replacing battle losses.