Guess I must be an idjit but...

[pathfinder]

I have only won one game out of maybe 40 I have played against the AI. So I am advidly reading the forum here to try and figure out what I am doing "wrong".

I can assure you I will not d/l any of those mods that make the AI tougher/smarter!!

[Daynarr]

Man, I wish I was you.

[Jubala]

pathfinder, try building about 5 base space yards on emergency the first thing you do and as soon as they are build have them build colony ships on emergency and start colonize everything in sight while you research bigger hulls and guns. Don't bother building warships until you meet some AI's. And as soon as your 5 base space yards (or more if you wish) are ready either start building colonyships on your homeworld or take it off emergency and build satellites or weapon platforms. As soon as the base space yards have been in emergency for 1.0 years mothball them then instantly unmothball them. Won't work in the next patch but it does for now. The first you build on the first planet you colonize is a mineral storage or two to store the excess minerals you are hopefully generating. I sometimes build a colonyship first thing so I can build that mineral storage (or several) at once. Depends on wether I started with high resources or not.

[Psitticine]

And never forget: research early and research often!

I go for the techs which increase production (including research production!) as well as the larger hulls and better weapons. I also tend to jump up to the second level engines quickly as the extra speed can be a very nice thing.

[Seawolf]

ALso make friends and build storage facilities so that you can stock pile materails but build when you have too.

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Seawolf on the prowl

[thecyclemania]

Jubala---
I can't believe you suggest a newbie to use the mothball trick. If you really need that one to get a good start...

Seawolf---
The idea is to expand your empire as fast as you can. After all this is a 4X. eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and then at some point, eXterminate. So it's quite simple, you must build colony ship in order to expand your empire. You must also increase your production capability. This means building base shipyard around planet and shipyard on planet. You also have to move your population all over your empire. So when you colonize a good planet, and you plan to have a shipyard there, move some population over there. This way, this planet can now produce colonization ship to support your expansion.
Never let your home world to its maximum population. Leave it in the 90% full range. This way, your empire is always growing in population globally. And you want that.
So you start with one world that produces colonization ships, then 2, then 4, then 8...you get the idea. It's exponential. Since the AI is such a wuss, don't build too much defense force initially. Phase 1 of the game is always eXplore and eXpand. Then in order to defend your borders, build some ships and space station. Hope this helps.

thecyclemania

[Jubala]

quote:

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Originally posted by thecyclemania:
Jubala---
I can't believe you suggest a newbie to use the mothball trick. If you really need that one to get a good start...

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No, I don't need that one to get a good start. In fact, I have changed emergency and slow to produce at the same rate as normal so it can no longer be used at all. But from what pathfinder says he needs all the help he can get and that little trick/abuse sure helps things along quite nicely.

[Taqwus]

Pathfinder --

You'll also find that you can afford to play a lot more relaxed in a larger galaxy; there's a much greater survivable margin of error there, and you need not play completely ruthlessly to win. You can even use Ministers (well, transports, mines/sats, resupply and repair, anyway) and win.

Also, tailor your race to your intended strategy. If you don't think you'll be doing ground combat (either attack or defense -- but I've not yet seen the AI try, so mostly attack), you can safely take a -50% there. Research bonuses are GOOD, unless you're going to try to blitz (small galaxy) and need production / combat / maintenance bonuses instead. If you don't intend on using trade that much, you can take a -50% on Politics. And so forth.

And you might want to think about phases of the game -- early expansion, boosting research and production output, converting atmospheres and so forth. And what's the baseline warship that'll suffice should somebody come a-knockin' -- phased polaron beams are pretty good for this, since they're not that costly to research, they're common enough that you might be able to steal them, and they do quite well (when combined with PD) throughout most of the game. You don't want to get stuck with DUC Is, but neither should you feel compelled to go for Crystalline X or whatever just in case.

In my current, _very_ relaxed game in a 255-system galaxy, I started in a rapid-colonization phase with an emphasis on getting better applied research and economic techs.

After this, came getting the other colonization techs. My race is Organic, so it behooved me to get as many colonies as possible in preparation for the replicant centers...

Somewhere along the line I became Mega-Evil w/o ever fighting or doing anything remotely evil, so I needed to switch focus to getting some combat techs due to having two low/medium-intensity wars on opposite sides of my empire.

Once both were safely contained, computer techs followed to maximize production efficiency, because what I had in mind would be expensive -- atmosphere conVersion (there *really* don't seem to be that many Large/Huge with no atmosphere). War came again (when I found the Eee, who had roughly caught up in score while I was at war). However, their ships have vastly inferior range (since mine have solar collectors, and can destroy the nearby colonies they might use for resupply; basically, the Eee entirely on the defensive), the advantage was clearly mine. Mega-Evil got triggered again, while the first phase of atmospheric conVersion is under way (gradually queued 'em up in the first 10 systems. One atmosphere already destroyed, the rest will follow. This should help my pop and resources skyrocket...).

The plan for the rest of the game is to

a) convert more atmospheres (eventually, all the domed colonies -- namely, almost all my colonies)... This can be done relatively safely since there appear to be no serious threats (although much of the galaxy is still unknown, so there would be room for an annoying Darlok clone).

b) convert extra space into more resources, research and intel (miscalculated; need more radioactives, in particular. On the bright side, minerals are abundant.)

c) refit my aging warships with the combat tech I'm researching now (since pretty much all the efficiency tech -- Computers, Planet Utilization, etc -- are already maxed. So are some of the useful, but not yet used, shp techs.)

d) unleash them once more on the Eee and anybody else who stands in my way. Could probably jump to this now -- at least, the Eee -- but that wouldn't be as satisfying.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Commander G]

Pathfinder --

Others have mentioned this, but let me re-iterate. Use Emergency Build as much as possible. Even without exploiting the Mothball bug, 10 turns of double production followed by 10 turns of half product will yield an increase of 50% (200%+50% > 100% + 100%)in addition to getting what you need sooner. Even with the next patch, (200% + 25% > 100% + 100%).

Use the slow build turns to build units since they have smaller costs and can still be completed in one turn.

I also find the base yard scheme useful as several small production queues is better than one larger queue.

[pathfinder]

Thanks all for the comments!
They are truly appreciated.

Now ifn them aliens will just submit!

hehe

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Harry B.