Strategy

[von Runstedt]

I've heard elsewhere on this forum that resources are limited and will run out over time (something that I have also noticed in my playthroughs). Is it necessarily a bad strategy then to just peg out a large zone of control, colonizing only as many planets as you need to maintain a sustainable infrastructure and fleet to protect the borders and just wait while the AI colonizes everything and depletes all of its resources building and maintaining its fleets until it can no longer maintain those fleets and then just colonize all of the untapped worlds, build a massive fleet and then conquer everything?

[Rosseau]

Sounds like a good idea to me.

I don't know how some people have come so far in the game. Must be playing day and night.

[Firefox440]

Sounds like a good idea to me.

I don't know how some people have come so far in the game. Must be playing day and night.

I agree. But perhaps they are playing at easy level.

About strategy, colonize everything is not good. At least not in the begining. Some planets are better than others. Other point is how I recomend you handle everything with micromagnament, step by step, do not use plan colonizations or you can overload your unique shipyard in the begining. Other point and I have told it before because it was a good suggestion from Ufnv, it was colonize in the begining 9 mineral planets, 2 ocean for research, 1 or 2 for Industrial and all the others for agricultural. Following this way, you will create your empire easier.

[von Runstedt]

The only problem I have found with this plan you mention is having the production facilities where you need them. For instance, planetary defense platforms can't move and need to be moved in containers if they are not built somewhere where they are at the border. I always find it best to have my major industrial planets on my borders so that my warships don't have to traverse major distances to get to a planet where they are needed. I also prefer to have several planets set to industry to create an assembly line system that can build ships in parallel so that I can churn out large fleets quickly if needed. This helps when there are planets that dont really have any mineral value but decent industrial capacity.

[Mojamaguena]

I've heard elsewhere on this forum that resources are limited and will run out over time (something that I have also noticed in my playthroughs). Is it necessarily a bad strategy then to just peg out a large zone of control, colonizing only as many planets as you need to maintain a sustainable infrastructure and fleet to protect the borders and just wait while the AI colonizes everything and depletes all of its resources building and maintaining its fleets until it can no longer maintain those fleets and then just colonize all of the untapped worlds, build a massive fleet and then conquer everything?

I guess that that won't happen because the AI will steamroll you the AI will take all Earthlike and Gaia planets and have all the research they can muster eventually you will not have a fleet that can match their tech, furthermore the AI seems to explore wormholes so you will never be "safe" of an random invasion inside your own territory.

What I do early game it focus on exploring and at the same time plan colonization of all and every planet that its suited for mining and taking all the Earthlike/oceanic/Gai planets on my surrounding ASAP, then you will have enough planets to build ships very fast in a short time, pirates are usually more of a nuisance than a real threath so you can skip fighting them till you research HIC (heavy ion cannons) and steamroll them with better firepower.

Mine everything, you can you stock what you mine and don't lose it so if a planet it's empty of resources it can be flipped to production or research or farming depending the kind of planet.

You should build your empire arround your Eartlike planets and find the best defensible stars crosses I designed a ship that can autorefuel and have the best range plus stealth in order to map the galaxy and take best blueprints for bigger and better hulls called it Astromaper and so far its working amazing it's unvaluable to know where all those wormholes are leading

[von Runstedt]

lol What? I have literally never had the AI use the wormholes to try to invade my territory and I havent even bothered exploring them. As for mining every possible planet my next question is why? sure the resources do stockpile but the production will run down over time and there are techs later that help improve both yield and endurance of the planets you mine so it makes sense to hold off on mass exploitation for those resources. Besides which, having resource planets in reserve and untapped can come very much in handy if you find yourself in a pinch where you need the extra resources because all your current mining planets have run dry.

Also i have used this strategy and no found myself in anyway held back in terms of research compared to the AI. If anything the AI has been way way far behind me in my advanced research or at least has never tried to implement any of their technological advances since I have yet to be impressed by any of their ships performances in the battles I've fought against them.

[Mojamaguena]

lol What? I have literally never had the AI use the wormholes to try to invade my territory and I havent even bothered exploring them. As for mining every possible planet my next question is why? sure the resources do stockpile but the production will run down over time and there are techs later that help improve both yield and endurance of the planets you mine so it makes sense to hold off on mass exploitation for those resources. Besides which, having resource planets in reserve and untapped can come very much in handy if you find yourself in a pinch where you need the extra resources because all your current mining planets have run dry.

Also i have used this strategy and no found myself in anyway held back in terms of research compared to the AI. If anything the AI has been way way far behind me in my advanced research or at least has never tried to implement any of their technological advances since I have yet to be impressed by any of their ships performances in the battles I've fought against them.

Well IMO this game it's awesome the fact that every game can be different everytime makes it even better, a lot of variables can make a whole different game such having close at the beginning good planets or friendly neighbors instead of the dangerous ones.

In my game dind't have earthlikes too cloose so had to explore a lot to find them while they AI had a better start and as you can see here they doing pretty well in research , during my galaxy exploration found that they tend to find best planets they can get even if that means leaving huge gaps between their space, they try to make you think that they are bigger I guess or try to establish as soon as they can a limit to my expansion.

Specially the Drills they seems to do that even more than Logans as in the border of space I meet them, they only have Earthlikes and ocean worlds and they leave those gaps but they unify later in game while their homeplanets it's in the rearguard very well hidden deep inside their borders.

The AI doesnt care of big chunks of maps totally controlled by them instead they try to get territory as clusters of star systems for later unify them.


What I do it's plan the order to colonize and keep discovering new suitable worlds in doing that you don't overmining planets because they don't fully develop them in 100 years so if you plan to colonize all suitable worlds let's say you found a new planet for mining and order to colonize it, then your first discovered planets are coming to their max mining potential by then, that means that you will never run out of minerals and your enemy wont be able to get them that easy furthermore colonizing everything in your path extends the action radius of your defensive fleet giving them movility and refueling capabilitys that otherwhise will be really hard because you sometimes have to bring refueling ships wasting a lot of time in the proces.

Have to point that even colonizing everything you can still have plenty of resources inside your Space because at the beginning I can not build in seismic and high radioactivity planets so those are potential expansions and resources to grab in the late game, resources shouldn't be any problem by then.

It's curious that you mention about the AI don't using wormholes because in my game they are using it or at least have used it since I have a fleet in the center of my space at 3 jumps of my Capital world and it saw action through Logan sneak attacks inside my deep territory which it's imposible for them to go there without a wormhole or other "subspace trick", however I will try to take some screens when it happens again and try to find if they did by other means.

[von Runstedt]

I'm not talking about controlling every system within my reach. That is of course stupid. What I'm talking about is colonizing the planets on the borders of my empire to create a vast interior zone that, though not fully colonized but never the less in my zone of control and which I can colonize at my leisure later with just enough planets colonized along my interior lines of communication to allow fleets to easily move from one frontier to the other without needing refueling ships. I only start colonizing my interior possessions once I get hydroponics which skyrockets my food production because it finally makes exhausted dwarfs and planetoids actually useful and I start colonizing more mining worlds once I feel consolidated enough to start building up my conquest fleet to start pushing out from my borders.

As for the AI's decisions in colonizing planets, I understand the impetus to colonize the more valuable planets first, in my territory I have 6 earth like planets, 2 super earths and 4 ocean worlds, so I understand the need to get these early but I still managed (I'm red in the image) to achieve this end in what I think is a very logical manner that creates an at once large but easily defensible empire. I can't say the same about the AI's choices because as you can see from the map the Magellans and Gavakians have empires that are all over the place with little if any coherent plan evident in their layout as to how the plan to defend their territories as they have multiple points all across the map that require large fleets to adequately defend them. If the AI for the Logans was halfway intelligent it would be just completely overrunning the Magellans because there would be no way for them to adequately protect everything.

[von Runstedt]

Also, to be clear, I happen to like this game a lot and I wouldn't have put as much time into this game if I didn't. Its better in my opinion than, say, a game like endless space, but just because it is better doesn't mean it doesnt have its flaws

[Mojamaguena]

Out of curiosity, how are the Urgans in your game? Agressive or they just are afraid of you? And when you say "super earths" are you using the term strictly or are you refering to those with the surname Gaia?

Also does the neutral AI respects your borders? Because neither Logans nor Drills seems to care of my borders even demanding them leaving, but otherwhise they won't like you do the same :S

[von Runstedt]

The Urgans were very aggressive in this game especially early on and have declared war on me dozens of times throughout this play through. They haven't attacked me as often recently but they still will and really don't like me. The same goes for the Koalas but they attacked me far less frequently. And yes the neutrals will try to violate my borders with stealthed ships but I usually call them on it and where possible try to destroy them once the time period given for them to leave is up. I happen to think that mechanic is kind of stupid because in the real world if spies are caught spying they can be executed or imprisoned and it won't create a war with the spy's home country. I really think the same should apply here. If another race chooses to violate my territory then they ought to realize what they are getting themselves in for and shouldn't be surprised, let alone ready to go to war, if I destroy their ships illegally in my territory.