SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?

[Phoenix-D]

Thing is, even aggressiveness and defensiveness bonuses have their limits. Defensiveness won't help you if your opponent comes charging in with Organic Armor III ramming ships! Nor against a talisman. It's a big advantage, but not insurmountable. If you can put enough ships into space (by way of increased happyness and shipyard production) that advantage can be negated. Far side Warp-point defenses are also useful in that regard, since it's much easier to hit at close range.

Beserkers gives you power, but you pay for it. -5 production. -5 research. -5 intel. -5 trade. -2 shipyard (ow).

Research is important; always will be. And since PD is so extremely accurate and powerful in the umodded game, you need combat sensors. That's a given.

Ditto for agressiveness/defensiveness. Useful and probably a bit overpowered for the cost, but not essential.

Scenerio: down to two empires now, both reasonably high tech. You've dumped large amounts of points into Defensiveness, and mount stealth/scattering/ECM. Your opponent has the Religious Talisman. Poof, no advantage.

Scenerio: All the tech is equal, your ships have a to-hit advantage because you went for defensiveness. Your opponent counters by researching Wave Motion Guns (they get a + to hit). You could do the same, but you're already hitting him reliably anyway..

Phoenix-D

[TerranC]

Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy’s plans; the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy’s forces; the next in order is to attack the enemy’s army in the field; and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.

-Chapter Three: Attack by Strategem
Sun Tzu, Art of War.

Art. Definitely.

[oleg]

quote:

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Originally posted by Gryphin:
The name of the book I mentioned was:
"Numbers, Predictions and War"
It gets a lot of hits at Google.com

rdouglass,
"In SE or in real life, technolgy almost always wins. Period."
Your key word is, "Almost". For Example the highly trained and technology superior German Army of WWII vs the untrained masses of equipment of the Russian army. It was however a Phyric Vitory if you look at the kill ratio.

In the case of the Germans, I believe, they failed in the "Art of War".

"There is an exception to every rule. Including that one"

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This is enough. I know first-handly how arrogant is western public (consequence of Cold war propaganda) about WWII. But for God sake, how can anyone talk about WWII without any knowledge of T-34, IL-2, KV-1, Katusha, Yak-1/3/7/9, etc. ?

PS. Well, I should concur about "highly trained" note. The 37-38 purge deprived Red Army of 2/3 of command personnel. Nobody knows fo sure, but it is highly likely that was the major reason for disastrous 41 compain. Whatever the modern historians say, Hitler was far from being stupid when he planned 41 invasion of Soviet Union. Barbarossa was a very clever plan, it just did nor work. 40-41 were the lowest point of Red Army readiness. The mass production of T-34 started in January of 41. One year delay and Wermacht (spl, sorry) would not advance farther then Brest.

[ 25 April 2002: Message edited by: oleg ]

[ 25 April 2002: Message edited by: oleg ]

[ 25 April 2002: Message edited by: oleg ]

[Taz-in-Space]

oleg, I know that T34 & KV1 were tanks
and believe IL-2 and Yak 1-9 were planes.
but you have me on Katusha!

[oleg]

quote:

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Originally posted by Taz-in-Space:
oleg, I know that T34 & KV1 were tanks
and believe IL-2 and Yak 1-9 were planes.
but you have me on Katusha!

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For IL-2 check out these links (I'm not Oleg who programed the game, good luck to him )
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/ent...00/1698123.stm
http://www.il2sturmovik.com/

"Katusha" is a mobile short-range rocket launcher. Even though designed in WWII, it has a relevance to modern times:
http://www.iris.org.il/katyusha.htm

[Mudshark]

some very good Posts to this forum, if no one minds, I will add to the Stratagy&tactic website, it would be a shame for this forum to be lost.

[Mudshark]

Ther is a very good article about why Nazi Germany lost the war in www.wargamer.com . It had more to do with logistics than anything else. Very good read. And some of it could be used in SEIV.