He who attacks first loses? Vel?

[cbn]

Garth

what you do is precisely what I do -- 1 per base but more if there is a perceived threat.

Ned

I generally don't have many strong defenders in the base at all. I will "overinvest" in probes but not so much with troops in the base. I rely more on barrier defenses so that you don't even get to land the troops. As discussed in another thread, barrier defenses (lining your coast with something be it formers, crawlers, units etc) are totally immune to successful attack unless you use

1. airpower
2. amphibious units
3 Probe actions

You can bombard all you want but that will not get you ashore. Good barriers plus good offensive ships or troops to hit you on the way in is the ay I play.

I also rely on upgrades a fair bit but have always played that upgrades are only allowed at the end of the turn if using the Design Worshop.


. . . and NED if the only victory condition is world conquest, my opponent faces the same dilemma that I do. We each know we have to beat the other in circumstances where a strong offensive would leave you vulnerable to counterstrike.

[WhiteElephants]

I think cbn brought up an excellent point that seems to have been neglected -- "counter strike". While against the AI you CAN simple load up a ship and send it across the seas to strike your opponent, against more than one human player there is the danger of being caught with your pants down when your attack force is out sailing the seas.

Ned -- I agree that a navy and airpower are a bettter investement than defense, but they too come at a steep cost in simply having the required tech for air power and having the minerals and sea bases for a navy. Being that I play builder/hybrid I can't afford to build an extensive navy or attack force without a sacrafice to my infrastructure. So the next best thing is defense, which is cheap from a mineral perspective concerning units, and cheap from the perspective of using formers to build sensors as I extensively use formers anyway.

As you've pointed out in other threads the AI is ineffective at gathering a mass of units and coordinating an effective attack, while those wiley humans who play momentum factions ofter shot for impact rovers quite early in the game, often pre-airpower and without the proper scouting out of the lay of the land or the required defenses in place you'll find that your quite a juicy target for any marauding momentum human played faction.

I think Vel's samurai story illustrates this point well. For instance, if a momentum faction does happen to stumble upon you and your base/bases have the air of preparedness (i.e. two probes, two defenders, a couple of sensors, perhaps a perimeter defense -- this is all relative to the point in the game contact is made -- this also doesn't mean you are acutally prepared just so long as you maintain the appearance of being so) the attacker will most likely seek out an easier target.

If I understand correctly, you're saying that you'd much rather be the attacker, which I myself completely agree with, but some factions are simply not "geared" for that type of play, or like me, I generally don't play that way. And as mentioned in this thread ( or was it another thread?) there is a window of opportunity for the attacker who employs a "rover rush". As the game goes on the attacer is required to created a larger and larger force in order to gain any substantial ground and if no substantial ground is gained than the production of all those minerals and energy have gone to pot while the defender steams ahead in tech,energy, and minerals.

[Thantos]

An intresting discussion so far and I simply could not resist the oppurtunity to add my own thoughts to (as limited as they are sometimes.

My own experience in the game (lately conducted almost exclusively on a 3 computer lan with a couple friends on a huge map) is that the attacker risks significant exposure during his attack run to defender counter strikes. To use a few examples from my last game where I am playing the hive on the mother of all continents (it wraps around the entire world and this was on a 50-70 map). One of my neighbors was a Computer Sparta and while she never really seriously threatened me due to my advantages in production, her being only a AI and my extensive road/river network which allowed me to rapidly move impact rovers within my boarders.

However when I shifted from defense to attack I became incredibly exposed and my attack forces were frequently hit in the flanks by spartan artillery pieces hidden in the extensive fungus between us (this was before I had time to research artillery of my own and I had limited to no armor research as well).

Add in as well a rather obscene number of rocky squares as well which both slowed my attacks and which made perfect perching ground for Spartan infantry units with synthmetal. Which forced me to either detour around them (with no gauruntee that I could considering the lack of real maneuver room with my rovers) or attempt to punch through them. Which would frequently result in a dead or crippled rover.

I know I should have made more extensive use of probe teams in that war but my economy at the time was weak enough that purchasing Spartan Units or cities was questionable during the first campaign. And I did make more use of them during the second war as my economy had matured between conflicts.

Sparta eventually lost the first war of course due to its handicap in leadership, but I was forced to accept only a limited peace due to the difficulties experienced above and a real concern that my real opponent a human controlled Drones would take the oppurtunity the oppurtunity of my distraction to continue to expand his lead in internal infrastructure build ups while mine went into the construction of many ultimately dead rovers.

That war cost probably cost me both cyborg factory and areospace academy due to the slow down of my infrastructure compared to his. It also occupied my formers for years afterwards trying to connect up my new widely spaced conquered cities with the rest of the empire and their general lack of good terrain around them tied up the formers for yet more years as they built forests, boreholes, and condensors.

As vel said a drawn out draining war as opposed to a short sharp victorious blitzkrieg leaves you exposed to both human and computer predators (though one of those two is only of a marginal threat, can you guess which one . It can also leave you with only minimal gain that even when the peace treaty is signed it will continue to drain your empires limited resources for years afterwards perhaps distracting you from long term goals due to short term nesscesity.

[Ned]

Thantos, The key is attacking the enemy. You attacked the wrong faction, didn't you.

Ned

[DilithiumDad]

I have to say that my experience in multiplayer, both at ACOl and here at Apolyton, has been the opposite: whoiever attacks first wins. Of course, the other part of the assumption is "assuming equal forces". But the forces never are equal, are they? And the attacking faction is usually ahead in tech and population or they wouldn't be throwing their weight around.

In multiplayer, all too often the weakest faction is attacked by its neighbor. The attacker very quidkly doubles the number of bases they control and it's all over for the remaining factions, including the former #1. The moral I have learned is to keep an eye on your weakest opponents and do your best to help them out when they are attacked. Better yet, don't wait for your weaker opponents to be attacked, get a pact with them and shore up their defenses with your own units.

[Thantos]

Perhaps Ned but despite the heavy costs I paid for the war I felt compelled to fight it and I came within a hairs breath of pulling it off cheaply in the first assault wave (I have a 4-1-2 outside of his capital that died to his last defending 1-2-1 after that defeat he upgraded to 4-3-1s which made my life very difficult).

Also as expensive as the war was and as badly it affected my metagames position to not fight it would have been far worse. If I had not fought it I would not have been able to secure and develope Sunny Mesa from Spartan incursions that would have continued to push the border back between us from both the bottom of my empire and to the bottom left of my empire. And if Sunny Mesa fell it would have opened up my heartland to her as I had some serious river networks gifted to me from planet.

A still strong Sparta would have been a constant distraction to my southern frontier and would have put her in position to assault my later developed and extensive sea crawler fleet. This would have allowed the other human player to push the issue with me later in the game on our border which would have been intolerable now that we are living in the PB age.

In short the Spartan war cost me a great deal of my initial velocity costing me a great deal in terms of wasted turns and its successful conclusion still draws some of formers south trying to connect my far flung empire together by mag tubes and attempting to terraform the massive desert I inherited. However it did buy me piece of mind, and effectively secured both a flank and two important sea zones for me.