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**Kloreep** · June 23, 2003, 21:01

Good beginner race is a matter of debate. Ethereans are nice because of their preference for big, roomy gas giants that no one except other Ethereans likes, but those gas giants tend to be rare, though great to have. Tachidi are a race I've heard mentioned as a good beginner one; I suppose they would be, since they have a good growth rate and a fair number of pick points, though I've never played them.

**shmily_dana** · July 21, 2003, 12:15

Well, I tried this weekend with the new patch. (1.2.5)

I played Cynoids and started in the middle of a 3-arm Galaxy. I was boxed in by NO and Gas bags to my right. Bugs to my left. I made friends with both. Expanded up and down. Humans below and Rocks above. I needed to expand and Humans were the weakest. I was doing good against them, but I built a colony too close to the Rocks. They declared war. I was able to hold them off, but I had no chance to expand with new colonies any more. (The Gas bags and the bugs still had lots of room. They each had an arm to their selfs. So did the rocks. My only chance was to expand/conquer the human territory.

Then the Gas bags declared war. I can only think they allied with someone else. We had good relations and I did not attack any thing of theirs. (I reloaded 5 turns back and replayed to make sure I did not do anything to them. They always declare war on the same turn.)

I had nothing to defend my border worlds. (My home planet was very close to their home world and territory.)

I gave up at this point, since they had a bigger fleet then I. They were about even technologically and they still had lots of safe worlds to expand to.

comments?

**Turk Man** · July 21, 2003, 12:31

dam you got the good map!

**Maverick88** · July 29, 2003, 12:38

I find this to be the most interesting setup:

Race - Tachidi
Galaxy - 3 arms, huge
Random events - often
races - 15
difficulty - regular
Restart until near or in one of the arms. Screw tech for about 30 turns and get 2 fleets. One holds entrance to arm and the other cleans out anything inside. Dont bother w/transports. Wipe the enemy(s) out quickly before they can get too far ahead of you in tech. No half measures... commit xenocide. Now catch up in tech and expand into your arm then update fleet.

(If this is still too hard then go to www.moo3downloads.com and get the Max Race picks mod, 550 picks)

**shmily_dana** · August 4, 2003, 12:00

I tried a new game with modified EVON for tech & industry against 3 opponents in a medium cluster. I had the biggest empire and was going for a conquest.

I was frustrated in doing this, because I hate not being able to pick the planet I want to attack. I wanted to get the big, or large pop planets first. Mainly to remove enemy mobilization bases from the system.

I seem to always get some small little rock I can't build anything on, while the enemy continues to reinforce each turn. I have a base near by, but it takes 2-3 turns for my guys to arrive.

I won the senate. I had turned that victory option off, but I was done with this game.

I MAY be back for more...

**Proteus_MST** · August 4, 2003, 13:25

Originally posted by shmily_dana
I tried a new game with modified EVON for tech & industry against 3 opponents in a medium cluster. I had the biggest empire and was going for a conquest.

I was frustrated in doing this, because I hate not being able to pick the planet I want to attack. I wanted to get the big, or large pop planets first. Mainly to remove enemy mobilization bases from the system.

I seem to always get some small little rock I can't build anything on, while the enemy continues to reinforce each turn. I have a base near by, but it takes 2-3 turns for my guys to arrive.

I won the senate. I had turned that victory option off, but I was done with this game.

I MAY be back for more...

You can choose which Planet to Attack.
On the Screen where you decide if you wish to attack
there is a Button in the middle of lower edge of the screen.
Normally it is greyed out, but if "Invade Planet" is activated, it is active and you can choose, which Planet to attack.
It also gives Informations about the Defenses of the Planet.

However, you don´t have Informations about the Location of the Mob-Center, but, if you have Information or do suspect where it is (or just want to conquer the biggest one) you are able to choose the right Planet

**shmily_dana** · August 4, 2003, 18:15

The more subtle problem I mentioned is that I was losing interest in the game. It takes a few turns to conquer a planet, there are several planets in a system. The enemy has many systems. It was going to take about 150 to 200 turns to finish off the Siliconoids. And then there are two other opponents.

I usually stay up late Fridays and Saturdays to play games. I can easily stay up very late, due to the "just one more turn" phenomena. And I'm still wired when I go to bed. I hate to say this, but I was dozing off between turns playing MOO3. Or maybe I was just tired...

**Grumbold** · August 5, 2003, 05:17

MoO3 is certainly a big, long game. That is one drawback from trying to make it have more of everything. Then again, I can think of games with 1/10 of the detail that take hundreds of turns to finish.

The one thing it does encourage you to do to speed things up is attack along a whole series of routes if you can, instead of using one big stack for everything. I kinda like that, because it feels right to me. Its a very risky move to bunch up all your troops and march on the enemy capital ignoring everything else. Even Napoleon got beaten that way.

**shmily_dana** · August 5, 2003, 11:15

That was more or less what I was doing. I was attacking the enemy at two points and defending at two others. The enemy was able to moblize his forces at any point. I would start down the star lanes and see no ships. When I got there he had enough to counter me. And he seems to have the advantage of seeing what I have coming and assemble counter-armadas. I don't know what he has in reserve.

**Proteus_MST** · August 5, 2003, 14:27

After all I observed til date,
the enemy can have really realy large Forces in Reserve.
One Time, when I shared System with an Empire which became my enemies, my opponent was able to mobilize maybe 700 Ships within one turn. The turn prior he just had 300, the next turn he had maybe 1000.
Luckily you´ve got the 10-Armada Maximum in all Battles, so, despite having 1000 Ships within the System, he could only attack my Planet with maybe 180 Ships (sometimes more, as Fleets of System Ships can encompass more than 18 Vessels) and my 200-300 Ships where always enough to repel his attacks and destroy more of his Ships than my own Fleet lost.
But he was always able to restock his Fleets from the Reserves, so I think he must have even more than those 700 Ships in his Pool (no wonder, it was a great Empire

).

**Grumbold** · August 6, 2003, 07:50

Yep there's a lot of talk about the perceived task forces not retreating issue. The devs are pretty adamant that what people are seeing is one task force being told to retreat and then during turn processing it is disbanded while turn a very similar TF is pulled from reserves or shows up.

**Proteus_MST** · August 6, 2003, 14:03

I don´t know, but maybe the AIU behaved right this time.

My Opponent had a lot of Planets within the System (whereas I had only one, which he had given me in atime when we still were friends) and also a Mob Center.
I don´t know how the I should behave if it retreats in a System where it owns Planets. It could be possible that they just retreat to their next Planet within the System (and are therefore still available to attack the next turn).

I also don´t know for sure what happens if you have a large Taskforce (more Ships than you can use to attack) and retreat. Do all Ships in your Taskforce retreat, or only those Ships which took part in the Attack? (I rarely send more fleets than I can use, so I never had the chance to observe it).

**Grumbold** · August 7, 2003, 06:58

They should retreat from the system, just like yours have to if you own it. What the AI does, apparently, is disband a fleet ordered to retreat so you never see it disappearing down a starlane.

In the past desperate people talked about sending 20+ colonisation fleets to attack a guardian because the extra fleets could slip past and colonise beyond the blockage even though the first 18 got wasted or retreated. Dont know if that has changed, but I suspect not.

**shmily_dana** · August 8, 2003, 10:08

Well, let me revise my initial question...

What is a good set-up for a new player, if he wants a fast game?

I'm going to guess it involves using the bugs and going for a senate victory...

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