New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?

[cswiger]

Originally posted by Leo:
Hi guys, I'm an old MOO gamer and I'd heard that SEIV gold was an outstanding game so I got it and boy, I'm overwhelmed. I've found the beginning complexity of the game to be extreamly daunting and the computer AI to be ruthless.

Hi, Leo--

The AI's will vary in capability and in having a relatively clear starting area or whether they have to fight early on, but at least one or two will tend to present a real challenge. :-) Also, note that you can give lots of small gifts of extra resources to another empire to make it happy with you, which means they are willing to be peaceful and make treaties rather than fight.

There's got to be a better way! So, I appeal to you veterans out there... Any tried and true hints? Any basic strategies to someone trying to figure this game out? What technologies are better to explore? Tactics to use?[/QB]

With regard to defense against an attack, note that your best first line of defence are weapon platforms, because they are cheap and cost no resources (?) to maintain. Even a small WP (which the game abbreviates 'WS', I think) is 190kT of useful components, and you can fit quite a few even on small planets.

Research point defence as a maximum priority; it's good against seekers and fighters. Armor adds considerably to the useful lifespan of everything you build as it takes damage first, and is quick to research. Ditto shields. For weapons, if you can research fast, getting cap missiles V and saturating the enemy's PD with 'em will hold off quite a few AI attacks.

Getting even a WS with 2 lvl-5 PD, 10k of lvl-3 armor, two weapons, and a shield-- and building about half of each planet's cargo space with 'em should keep you going to around turn 100-150. Upgrade your units with every tech so that when you scrap old ones you don't scrap 5 of the same when you jettison cargo to make space for improved models. But don't do that unless you need to, of course.

My homeworld has 5600kT of weapon platforms (eight 400Kt WMs Mk1 - Mk6, 20 200Kt WS, Mks 1-8). That's 160 CSM's [about 100 lvl 3, 40 lvl 4, 20 level 5], around 20 PD (three per med WP), and a couple of beam weapons.

On the other hand, my primary competitors are the Colonials (w/ 680 units, mostly MF's but ouch! mines, too.) We had both filled up one cluster (about 8 systems, 12 planets) and had just planeted a colony in the other's cluster when we went to war. The AI's in the TDM modpack are getting quite good at design!

I'm winning, but it's just as well that race #3 is on the other side of a black hole and isn't pushing this way very effectively. They just exterminated what I thought was a respectably tough pair of LCs (three CSM-V's, 600pts of shield via ShG-Vs, four PD-Vs) with one LC armed with PD-Vs and various temporal lvl-3 weapons (TDB-IIIs for quad shield, and a large TS-III which skips armor/shield).

In other words, even against 2:1 odds, their ships are better than mine right now. I need to get better direct fire weapons and build a tougher front line before all of my missile LC's get toasted.

-Chuck