Overall Strategy and Massive Confusion

[BeeDee10]

If you are worried about other human players figuring out what your ships and planets are being used for based on their names, then I'd suggest coming up with a naming system which is _personally_ meaningful but which would be somewhat cryptic to someone else. For example, in one particular game I've been giving my colony ship classes letter designations; the "Colonizer C" class is for ice planets (after "cryogenic"), the "Colonizer H" class is for gas giants (after "Hydrogen"), and the "Colonizer L" class is for rock ("Lithosphere"). The next time I upgraded my colonizer designs, however, I switched them all around; rock colonizers became "Colonizer G" class (for "ground").

You can even go beyond cryptic and actively mislead a human opponent with names. Give your colonies suffixes like "mil" or "sci" or "stor", but instead of having mil be military bases, sci be science worlds and stor be storage worlds, have sci be the storage worlds, mil be the science worlds, and stor be the military worlds. Of course you'd have to keep track of this; keep notes.

That's the number-one biggest thing. Keep notes. I've got one game which is on turn 120 where I've got a 500KB text file that contains every diplomatic message I've sent or recieved; it's easy to search for the names of systems to find out who promised you what and when. You can also keep notes on a system-by-system basis within the game itself by using the built-in map, but I haven't found that as useful; I keep forgetting to refer to it. Making a habit out of it would probably help, but I think it's just too hard to search them easily.

If one of your neighbors is the Crystal Mentality, don't start producing warships with a class named "Crystal Breaker." Alternately, go ahead and name them "Crystal Breaker" if your _real_ target is actually the Rhodon Network which lies right next to the Crystal Mentality's space (you might want to let the Crystal Mentality know about this ahead of time, though, or it might draw erroneous conclusions). The Rhodon Network's scouts will see them and perhaps start massing its forces along the Crystal Mentality's border in order to scoop up some territory because they think you're going to hit them instead, leaving their border with you wide open.

If you act dumb, a lot of players will assume you _are_ dumb. You can exploit this.

But I digress. Keep notes.

[Phoenix-D]

More screw-with-people's-heads:

Every ship built has a default name of ShipClass #ofshipsbuilt

Try renaming the fleet you send into enemy territory upwards. If, say, your attack class was named Bat, and your ships were:
Bat 003
Bat 004
Bat 005

rename them

Bat 020
Bat 021
Bat 022

Also remember that you can make colony ships out of ANY ship class. Do that, and then rename them to look like an attack ship; rename a *real* attack ship to look like a colony ship. Your opponent can't see fleet names, and in order to see ship classes he has to click on the ship itself and check it out.

Phoenix-D

[Gryphin]

Ahh, the "Art of Misdirection" and "If you want to hide something, leave it in the open". I call it Physc Warfare.

For notes I use "Notepad". You can put each game in a separate folder and keep multible notepad files there.

I'd mention my method of misdirection but Growltigga migh read this. Er: then again, this might be misdirection. < bemused grin >

[MikeRMcCartney]

Right now I am only playing against AI, but these suggestions sound great for when I do start to play against humans. Thanks. I've seen a couple of people mention keeping notes, either electronically or on paper, and was wondering how you organized them so they were useful? Do you organize by system or fleet or date? Could anyone post a sample (Unclassified of course), that showed an example?

[Gryphin]

Growtigga: Heads up!
The key to most strategic victories are:
Concentration of Effort, Ecconmy of Force, Mobility, and Flexibilty. (Addapted and modified ro game terms from Zun Sue The Art of War and a US Army Training Manuel)

Like you, at the moment I only play against the AI, but sometime soon, Growltigga and I hope to have a trans Atlantic game going, (PBEM).

My notes are mostly kept in separate files:
Specific to the current game
Apply to SE IV game mechanics.
Possible Strategies
Possible Tactics
Surprises
AI Behavior

Within the "Current Game"
It has always been my experiance that changing strategies part way though any endevor can be a big mistake are requires signifigant analasys before doing so. This does not mean you should not take the time to develop Point Defence Cannons if you run into a race using fighters or Cap Shp Mis,
Selected Global Strategy, IE: How I intend to "$X" the game as well as any details such as Facillities, Tech Trees I intend to complete in what order.
I tend to organize by "Front"
Then Solar Systems within the Front
Notes specific to AI actions and my intentions.

There is much more, but over all, it will be determined by your developping "Play Style".
Enjoy

[BeeDee10]

Oh, while I'm on the subject, another diVersionary naming tactic I use is to make sure each of my various stellar manipulation ships is a different class even if they have identical components. I don't do that for ship types with much more numerous members, since it makes for a _lot_ more work, but stellar manip ships are rare an expensive. I don't want one unlucky combat to let my enemies know which of my ships have sunbusters or warp-openers and which are just storm-clearers.

Alternately (there's _always_ an alternately), the ship classes "Nova1", "Nova3" and "Nova6" could have actual sun-destroying components whereas the classes "Nova2", "Nova4" and "Nova5" are actually just repair-and-resupply ships. Try to avoid having them get into combat, to keep your enemy from discovering that you're using this tactic. After the first system-bombing, he won't know which task forces are major kamikaze threats and which aren't - hopefully, he'll think they _all_ are.

One can always rename a ship, but one can't always easily change their class designation.

Confusion to the enemy!

[Skulky]

These namign strategies are great, i used the remnaming of the ships to great effect in tricking an enemy into thinking i had a plauge ship heading his way (bubonic) and had at least 3 more wiating (0004) and have done similar with my fleets, it doesn't hurt to change the numbers alittle to confuse them. but what happens when your queue runs into that number along the way? i guess it would just skip it. The note taking is smart, i have started that for all my PBW games, (AI isn't enough of a challenge that i need it, i can afford to screw up a little). and BeeDee10, does the enemy get to see your class designation? Going through neutral humans to spread disinformation is also a great tactic. another great trick is to make transport/colonizers with deeper purposes, means a lot of wasted effort on storage components but few will trouble with what appears to be a simple pop transport (can even back that up with a name...) and then their system goes up in smoke as the start of an intergalactic war. (was a pop deal previously).