Sea bases & conventional missiles

[bobyk464]

I had an Unsurpassed Seething AI Brother Lal taking out sea bases of mine in a most effective manner. The technique was a barrage of the required number of conventional missiles, and once the base was emptied, one ship moving in to occupy. Then I would see more missiles moving into the newly conquered base in preparation for launching the next turn's assault.
Anyone else ever see this? Anyone ever do this? Is there any defense against this other than conceding that you're hopelessly outgunned and the outcome of the game is inevitable?

[Earwicker]

Conventional missiles are pretty tough customers when it comes to defense. When they hit the scene, your best armor is likely to be photon or probability. Even a 1-6-1AAA defender is gonna get beat. However, a better approach is to use choppers as base-emptiers (since they're reusable).

For you, a saving grace is that Lal's missiles are expensive. Can you tell where he's coming next? If so, pile the base with vanilla 1-1-1 scouts as sacrificial lambs. Youll lose some units but it will cost him a lot more than it will cost you. Or while this mess is going on, make a 1-1-1*1 clean as you designated defender in vulnerable bases.

Meanwhile, get your counteroffense ready. The AI loves the sea-base-full-of-missiles trick. It will be his downfall. Right after Lal takes your base, watch him fill it with missiles for the next wave. Use a needlejet and take out that ship. Bring a few shard cruisers or foils near the base (or missile if you're not to shard yet). From two squares away, bombard the seabase full of missiles. Two attacks should knock each one down to about 50% strength. He won't launch these until they've returned to full strength (he won't even move them to a safer place). That should buy you some time. If you can bring in a chopper to kill all the missiles, you're in even better shape. Also, try to cover your cruisers with needlejets so they don't get knocked of by Lal's missiles.

You also need to strike elsewhere while his attention is occupied with the sea-base fiasco. How far away is his territory?

[cbn]

I had the AI try to do that to me as well. BIg question-- Do you have him infiltrated? IF you do, you should see this coming. If you don't, the first step is to get infiltration info.


I remember one game where I think it was MARR that was congregating missles just outside needlejet range . MY counterattack method was the helicopter suicide run. I took the damage to get my choppers close, and suicided a needle to get rid of the garrison. I then had 4 impact copters that each got about 4-6 hits at the base each. I killed 18 conventional missles at a cost of one good needlejet and two cheap choppers ( the other two made it home IIRC).

After that first experience I dropped a seabase right on Marrs lap and kept choppers on the prowl. IIRC there were later accumulations of of 11 and 8 or so missles that got killed without loss to me. I did a similar type of thing against AI Yang when the guy tried to build a PB. AS soon as I saw the build order I was enroute and it was eradicated the same turn it appeared.


Earwicker's other strategies sound good as well . I like the bombardment idea since I did not know they will not launch if damaged. Good tip. Feeding scouts to missles is a great tradeoff but it does nothing for the fact that you lose the base in question and would lose the next and the next as long as his missles outnumber your scouts. My approach is to build a couple of strong weapon attackers to kill defenders and then let a cheap unit like an impact chopper wipe the rest.


The AI does the same thing with jets. I believe I once killed close to 20 jets in a single base after destroying a garisson or two. It seems that the AI falls in love with a base to locate its units and never considers the multiple attack possibilities of choppers. I know that the location of the missles/airforce is often not that well defended LOL.

[Earwicker]

Originally posted by cbn
The AI does the same thing with jets. I believe I once killed close to 20 jets in a single base after destroying a garisson or two. It seems that the AI falls in love with a base to locate its units and never considers the multiple attack possibilities of choppers. I know that the location of the missles/airforce is often not that well defended LOL.

The scary thing is when they start piling a bunch of interceptors in the same base. I had Domai do that more than once. That's where the ship barrage becomes most useful, since the planes can be knocked way down to the red by bombardment - rendering them almost useless against the wave of choppers.

Sometimes I think the AI enver listened to that Sun Tzu quote in the HSA film. You can see the piles of missiles and know it's up to no good . . .

[Kirnwaffen]

I had an SP game as the Pirates where I had taken one of Domai's sea bases that was relatively close to shore. The turn after I took the base, the AAA shard cruiser (13-8res-6) I left inside got blasted with a few missiles. I thought "no big deal, I've got about 30 more of those," and hurried the garrison in the base.

Next turn, my AAA garrison gets blasted with a horde of missiles (brave little guy took quite a few hits before he died), and I thought "how many more of those does he have?"

So I checked his security nexus, and found that he had wasted about 10 on me, and had 96 more to go.

My solution was to hurry a tachyon field (had the CDF and Cloud Base) and build another AAA 8res garrison. Sure enough, next turn he flung more of his missiles at me, but he wasted a bunch of them to kill a relatively cheap garrison. I just let him keep pounding until he used all of his missiles. I kept a couple of cruisers nearby to fend off what little navy he had, and then I took the fight inland to him.

By the way, has anyone noticed that certain units just seem to be marked for air strikes? Formers, for instance. I've had many a rather amusing games watching the AI killing four or five needle jets to get through an AAA garison to waste a former. After I rebuild the garrison, the AI leaves me alone, as if killing that single former were SO important.

[Clear Skies]

I've had it happen to me - but luckily I got there first. I was fighting Domai and had the Empath Guild = free infiltrators, so I could see inside all his bases. I switched to 'View' and shifted the cursor around, checking out his garrisons and - whoa! A sea base with 16 Conventional Missiles in it!
Needless to say, I used a Gas/Wave noodle to take out the token garrison and plenty of choppers to eliminate them all!

Also, yes, I hate the way the AI always goes after Formers first, like they are the most important thing ever. Maybe it's a programming bug left over from CivII when that AI tended to see Settlers (formers & colony pods combined) as the first units to be taken down.
Whenever I declare a Vendetta I always always move any Formers within range of the AI inside my closest base and leave them there until the war blows over. Otherwise they just get pounded.

About the interceptor stockpile - correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I've seen two interceptors scramble at once to defend a Former I attacked by air, and when I won they were both destroyed. Is this a bug? Might attacking a nearby unit with air power force all the tactos to scramble and then you could shoot them all down at once?

Edit: Or you could just scrounge up a whole loada energy credits and mind control the base away - a lot better than destroying them all...

[bobyk464]

Thanks all for the kindly advice. I've learned from my mistakes in this game. However, I was ultimately unable to stand against the superior rival. I lacked the magnitude of manufacturing and economic resources necessary for the task. These resources in fact became fewer and fewer over time. C'est la guerre...

[death_head]

Yet another reason for me to utterly loathe the Peacekeepers...

[Drago Sinio]

I forget the exact armor level, but I think a photon AAA with tachyon , sensor and an aerospace center will laugh off a missile attack. Well , two or three anyway. I dont know about 96 of them.

An effective defense if the enemy is in range is to monitor the enemy bases, waiting until just before a missile is completed. Then at that point take out the base garrisons with a copter or whatever, and the AI will switch back to making a new garrison or two. This way the AI spends time building 90 percent of a missile, but never completes it. Especially good for an enemy building a planetbuster.

Even better, continually target the base producing the most lab points for your strongest enemy, and make that your military / or probe team objective. He cant BUILD missiles in the first place, if he never gets the tech.

[death_head]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the AI sometimes keep the work they've put into a unit or SP instead of losing it like normal? I seem to remember reading about something like that last year.

[Clear Skies]

Yes, the AI has a 100% carry-over on its minerals. So don't ever try that trick if they're building a Planet Buster - they will be able to produce anything they want in 1 turn for the next 100 turns or so. Massive garrisons, hellooooo...

[Drago Sinio]

It seems to me that when I kill the last defender the AI switches over to a garrison unit, and loses all the minerals, or more accurately wastes them on the garrison unit, rather than carrying them over to the next turn.

Maybe my memory is faulty from extreme old age and too many
six-packs, but I am sure I remember seeing the missile started again from scratch on the next turn. I guess I should double check.

[Earwicker]

My experience has been like that of SMAC Fanatic. I find a base 200 minerals into the construction of a PB and attack it to make them switch and waste. They build a AAA Silksteel garrison and they're right back to the PB production. Minus 15 or 20 minerals (+base production, -cost of defender), but not even losing the half that we do.

But then if the AI couldn't cheat it couldn't be competetive, right?

[Fitz]

Drago, you probably did the same thing as I did for a long time and assumed they were losing production and never checked. Now you know, you'll find yourself using the probe teams to disable production in AI bases a LOT more frequently.

Interestingly enough, I was playing a game just last night where I had established a beachead against Marr by taking one of his bases and attmpting to sprint over many many many many gas needles/copters (I am the hive, 1 turn each for gas fusion needle/copter). Unfortunately, it was a running battle to see if he would missile them before or after they had made a single attack run against him.

I was thinking up stratagies to counter this, then thought "why bother" (it was late ) and kept throwing the needle/copters (range sometimes required neeldes) at him. Sure enough, 15 turns later about half his territory was empty of bases/units.

Tonight I'll finish the second half.

The really annoying thing I found was that if I gassed a base out of existance that contained missiles, I had damn well better kill the missiles too, because they were garunteed to ALL launch next turn. Of course, common sense says I should kill them regardless, but as I said, it was late.

Also, don't forget the AI has infinite range on missiles, IIRC. Check old threads in the archive for mention of this bug. Unlike you, they can launch on any target on planet, although with conventional they tend to stick close to home.

[death_head]

Damn, that explains how I lost my cruiser transport with the enemy miles away...that's one AI cheat I'd rather do without.