[Puke]

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 ]