tutor-level difficulty
Note that tutor level prevents some game mechanics from working. Custom races, for example. No need to play at that level. You can learn to play at average difficulty if you make it a small or medium galaxy and play against only a couple oponents.
So, what's your favorite race?
I gave up playing pre-made races a
long time ago.
Always play a custom race.
Psilons f'n ROCK
...well...sort of. They're probably the best of the default races because they have the best research and I think they're the only creative default race. They tend to be the race that kills me most often, anyway. Note that when playing a custom race, whichever race you pick as your portrait won't appear in game, so if they give you a lot of trouble by all means choose their portrait. But personally I always leave them in the game. Most of the time they'rll be the most challenging of your opponents because of all thetechnology they have, and because of their annoying habit of researching lots of shield tech.
requesting research treaties. I told them where they could stick 'em
Treaties aren't neccesarily a bad thing. Don't feel you always need to avoid them.
custom race traits that suit your fancy?
First thing you need to decide is whether you're taking Creative or not. If you do, it will make your game massively easier, but if you grow accustomed to having it, it's diffficult to learn to play without it. Creative races never really need to worry about diplomacy, stealing technology, or scavenging it from captured ships. That's a lot of stuff that creative races just don't have to do, that non-creative races are dependant on. Note also that creative costs either 6 or 8 picks depending on which version of the game you're playing.
Subterranean is always good, pretty much no matter what. Since it increases the population on all of your planets, regardless of whether the planet is producing food, production or research, you'll be able to have more people doing it. As opposed to the basic farm/prodction/research bonuses which will be wasted on all planets doing anything else.
Bonus research is usually a safe choice. Bonus production can be ok, but often isn't worthwhile because in the early game a lot of your extra production is lost to pollution. Ground combat penalties are safe to take unless you're deliberately designing an entire strategy around capturing Antaren ships, which is an amusing novelty and everyone should probably try it once, but it's not really recommended for regular play. Defense penalties are usually ok to take so long as you plan to usually be on the offensive. Ideally your fleets will be big and strong enough that they'lltend to destroy things before they take much return fire. I recommend avoiding any spying modifiers. It's too expensive to really be worth taking as a bonus, but taking a spying penalty tends to hurt a lot because it means everyone in the galaxy will usually end up having your technology without needing to research it themselves. The income penalty is a reasonable choice. You'll definitely feel it, but it's a very playable handicap for the picks it gives you.
Diplomacy is useful at low and moderate difficulties. In impossible games, everyone will want to kill you. Consequently, if you're playing at impossible, you may as well always take repulsive. It's worth a lot of picks. If you're not planning on having any treaties of any kind, you may as well take repulsive regardless of difficulty. Trade treaties are very convenient to have, but since you'll eventually want to play at the harder difficulties anyway, you may as well get used to playing without them. Note that repulsive + the income penalty pick can be harsh, because repulsive prevents you from overcoming your lessened income through trade treaties. It's playable, but depending on your overall strategy, repulsive + ground combat penalty + defense penalty may be easier than repulsive + income penalty.
Telepathy + advanced technology is always good for a fast, fun game. Note that telepathy is kind of like creative, in that if you learn to depend on it, it's a bit difficult to play without it because telepathic races can fully auto-capture planets once they get cruiser-class ships. That means never having to worry about landing marines, xeno-relations buildings, or waiting for population to assimilate. The best part about telepathy though, is the speed at which captrued planets can put up defenses. A telapathic race can capture a highly developed planet, and maybe 3-5 turns later you can have a starbase, missile base and groudn batteries, meaning your fleet can go capture another planet without worrying about leftover ships taking it back. Telepaths are great for quickly absorbing entire empires and moving on. It's also fun to mind control starbases in combat and use them against the remaining fleet they were supposed to protect, though it tends to be more fun than useful. Note that if you take telepathy, you may as well take the ground combat penalty since you won't be doing much troop combat.
Democray sounds good on paper, but tends to be annoying because of the spying penalty, and the inability to eradicate planets. Unification governments are extremely functional, but tend to suffer in long games in large galaxies because the fixed morale bonus isn't as good as what can be acheived by late-game technology. Fuedal is a death sentence. The default government is usually best, but if you're playing in a small galaxy, or for whatever reason expect the game to be short and never get into late-game technology, unification can be a very worthwhile choice.
All in all, creative + telepath + subterranean is probably my favorite combination. If I don't want to play a telepath, I'll usually trade it for raw bonuses to research and/or production. Note though, that if you start out playing a creative telepathic race, there are a lot of game concepts that will be completely irrelevant to you, and so learning to play something else at a later date may be a nuisance.
How about preferred ship builds
For early blitzs, groups of frigates loaded with as many 2x (NOT 5x) MIRV-missiles as you can fit on them is usually the best choice. A few MIRV merculite missiles in the early game will often allow you to capture an enemy capitol before they develop shields. Five or six missile frigates, even with only MIRV-nuclear warheads can take on an unshielded early game starbase without much trouble.
After the early game, heavy, shield piercing phasers are a popular choice. Get them fast, then rush around the universe blowing everyone up. Upgrade to heavy disruptors when you get the chance. Stop researching physics once maulers become available. They're very large, so you can't fit many on a ship, and their range penalties are atrocious. The worst of it is that as soon as you get them all your starbases will be upgraded to uses them, and your defenses will suffer. Don't research mauler technology until you've captured Orion for death rays or particle beams. Preferabely death rays. Of course, if you're not playing a Creative race, this is less of an issue because you can simply research something else at that level instead of maulers.
Shields aren't that important. Offense beats defense more often than defense beats offense. High tech starbase will fend off a lot of fleets, but you'll never win by playing a purely defensive game at the higher difficulty levels.
Put battle pods on everything you build. Put heavy armor on everything other than missiles frigates. For missiles frigates, just plan on losing them regularly and rebuilding them.
You don't always need to put the latest and greatest technology on your ships. As your tech increases, old technologues will become more efficient, and take up less space. 100 phasers is probably better than 10 disruptors. Notable exception: because of the way shields absorb damage, if your opponents have high shield technology, some weapons will be completely incapable of penetrating them no matter what. In these cases you'll want bigger damage weapons. Occassionally it may be worthwhile to build ships with plasma cannons in between, but in most cases, the best progression is MIRV-missiles --> phasers ---> disruptors --> win game. If the game is a long game, you'll need to continue from disruptors ---> death rays to overcome late-game planetary shields. As long as you keep any computer from getting clas X shields, you shouldn't need to worry about it though.
Finally, a lot of the late-game technology is novel, entertaining...and really not worthwhile. Cloaking devices, hard shields, fleetwide missle jamming, stellar converters, black hole generators, some of tha Antaren/Orion-only techs....fun stuff that sounds great, and may be useful in certain situations, but in actual practice it's usually best to simply stuff your ships full of basic weapons and blow stuff up.
Any tips for stickin' it to the AI?
1) Expand fast, terraform early.
Don't get stuck in the rut of "I have one planet and need to wait 10,000 turns to get tech." That will work on low difficulty settings. It won't work on hard or impossible.
2) Research. Gobs and gobs of research. I listed "expand" before reearch, but the reason you want lots of planets is so you can be doing lots of research.
3) Build large fleets. Sometimes you'll think you're winning, wiping out system after system with your five or six super-ships, when all of the sudden the computer will show up with a fleet of puny little ships with old tech that completely fill the screen from top to bottom three or four layers deep. That's usually when they win. In most cases, fleets > planetary defenses. So build fleets. Yes, build defenses too...but build fleets. Don't depend on five or six ships to beat the game for you no matter how much tech you have.
4) Random important late-game concept: warp interdictors + insta-warp teleporters between systems. This way you can have only one or two fleets that can instantly go anywhere rather than needing to defend everywhere.
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Topic: Well, MoO 2 you too! (Read 3538 times)