Stellar Manipulation

[Argh]

Well, I have a Q for y'all. . .

Why would you *not* constantly destroy suns, past midgame? How can it not be to your advantage to constantly deny your opponants room to grow, whilst using warp point tech. to prevent them from being able to enter your systems through any but the longest routes?

Anyhow, just a thought. . . I did this to the AI and it totally fell apart. . . it hit its max pop., couldn't get to me except through choke points, and my own warp points reached far behind the lines of the next opponent, until we reached the "edge" of the galaxy, whereupon I had a huge advantage in tech and gear. Is there any reason you more experienced players wouldn't do this?

[ 28 December 2001: Message edited by: Argh ]

[Dracus]

I peronsally like to try and capture enemy planets, the only time I use the sun distroyer is in a roll play were I have a rogue ship. To me the sun distroyer is like nukes (IRL).

[Gryphin]

Argh,
Please see my post under the War and Peace thread. Overall your strategy looks like it is a win every time. I personaly enjoy games where the chance of losing is greater. I enjoy both the challenge and the surprise. I guess it is a matter of "Play Style". Even though it is a bunch of ones and zeros, I still have qualms about destroying sentiant beings. I realise this is a unusual position, but then, no one ever insulted me by saying I was "normal" * wry grin *

[geoschmo]

Against other human players this strategy only works to a point. Distance and supply isn't a huge problem for most human players once they understand the technique of fleeting with supply ships. And once Quantum Reactors are researched supply really isn't a problem at all.

Blowing up an opponents star system can be devastating sure, but given a large enough empire it's not a death sentance.

Star destoyers take a long time to build and a huge amount of resources to maintain. By the time you have them researched and built your opponent should be ahead of you in ships since you are spending a lot more on fewer ships.

Once you use it once they are going to protect their stars, so you have to knock them out very quickly. This requires a lot of star destroyers at the same time. And while you are setting this up you are vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike.

To do this against a human, it almost has to be a complete suprise, and you have to wipe out most of their systems in the first volley. Not easy to pull off.

Plus, it's not as fun as methodically taking planets one-by one from an opponent. Planning straetgy and counter-strategy. Fleets battles and what not.

Of course that Last point is purely my opinion.

Geoschmo

[rdouglass]

To Argh:

Try playing with all warp points connected and no stellar manip (no more star destroyers or popping into the center of the AI empire with 50+ ships). It does seem to put the AI more on a level playing field - try it, you may like it....

[zen.]

I forget which game I played in the past where if someone used certain weapons (...was it nukes in Civ?), a diplomatic penalty occurred with all the other empires. I think Alpha Centauri did something similar with treaties...if you attacked someone without declaring war, everyone else gets displeased too.

You can probably see the point I'm getting to with Stellar Manipulations.

Oh, and to answer the first poster: I don't utilize that strategy because I follow a 'Geneva Conventions' kind of idea -- if the computer doesn't/can't use such weapons against me, I won't either.

zen