newby's guide to ship and fleet strategy

[LGM]

quote:

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Originally posted by Phoenix-D:


"OVERWHELMING FORCE. Brutal, direct, unsurmountable FORCE."

[ 26 February 2002: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

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My response to both GUTB and Phoenix-D is that the strategy of creating a massive, cheap swarm early on and building tones of Weapon Platforms to defend against it is bad while the rest of the universe is developing and expanding normally. If a player spends his first 20 turns building a war fleet in a multiplayer game, he may trash the first player he meets, but he is not colonizing anything, so his power base is not growing. The goal these games is to expand and grow. A player who spends all his resources defending against an early swarm is also seriously set back. In a two player game this strategy might work in a very small universe. I hope someone tries this against me in the Universe Cup. But in that map, the two players start 7 systems apart, but two of the lings would be two turns apart as they are on the same side of the map. I think the home worlds would be 9 turns part. By turn 29, I expect to have Minefields which are the best way to stop an early game hoard. Once minefields enter play, offensive efforts usually shut down for a while while everyone builds massive Mineclearing fleets. A typical planet can build 10 cheap minefields a turn. A mine sweeper with 5 sweaping components will need level 2 to clear one turns worth. The player who build the awful swarm will no research colonies to research Mine tech 2, 3, etc, to keep up with minefield building.

I used to advocate playing with no minefields, but I guess without them early swarms would be hard to handle. Of cource in a multi-player game, I would just find a new game if I ended up being ambushed by a early swarm, knowing that they would not survive long. I would join a new game and hope to start in a better neighborhood.