MOO1 Final War

[Father Beast]

I discovered the joys of Final War when I played one of my first average level games. I was about to take Orion in a large galaxy and all of a sudden the rest of the races voted someone else to be high master. incensed by their stupidity, I refused their decision and found myself in one of the most difficult fights I've ever had. I held onto orion by the skin of my teeth several times and it took almost two centuries to get the upper hand, but I finaaallllly won that one. (oh well, another millenia under a tyrant...)

Since then, I have actually decided to go to final war for the fun of it, though it has never gotten that close ever again. The most obvious way is to vote for your opponent in the high council and then refuse to accept him. A really odd variant of this is to get elected to high master yourself, and then refuse to accept it. all those races who voted for you will now go to final war with you (so just who is high master, anyway?)

anyway, the reason I started this thread is because of a situation where I got my but kicked in a small galaxy, 5 races. the silicoids expanded and even though I had decent relations with the others, they all voted the silicoids in.

How can I keep these things from happening? I have been blindsided by these high council votes united against me more than a few times, and I don't always have enough to block election. is there any way I can prepare for these things, and get at least one ally to keep me from getting wiped up with.

I was not ready. I had 4 planets, warp 3 ships and robotic controls3. ahead of everyone except the psilons technologically, I was playing as the alkaris, who can defend astonishingly well with stacks of itty bitty ships. but when all those technically pathetic silicoids got psilon technology in the final war, my butt was toast.

in a side note, I wasn't conquered that game. I was hounded down to a small, poor planet, which was then destroyed by a comet. How humiliating.....

[vmxa1]

Yup, that is how it works. I use Final War as a way to stop the vote from coming up every 25 years. I just do not want to have to do all the clicking, once I have enough vote to stop others from winning.
You need to have 2/3 to win, so if you can get 1/3 + 1 either of your own or others or abstainings, you are safe.
At hard or impossible the vote is the most dangerous part of the game and how you can loss. If the Humans are in the game and get to be first or second in size they are a real threat as other will often vote for them.
So if you can not muster the votes and you see it is coming up on the election, you need to mend fences.
I like to keep tabs on who is a canidate to abstain.
Someone that is not an ally with the other guy.
You may have to bribe them before the vote. Of course you must end any war if you have one with them.
I like to play small maps at impossible and the vote is a real challenge. You will soon be stopped from expanding as you do not have the range and them the AI will have all the habitable planets. So I have a period that is hazardous. Then I get more planets and the vote is safe and the corner is turned.

[Father Beast]

I guess what I'm saying is how do you get one or more of the others on your side so you can keep final war off you until you're ready. I am particularly bad at diplomacy (I've never played human), and the one time in all my games I ever got an alliance is when I went to war with the sakkra when the psilons were at war with them. the psilons offered alliance after a while.
never otherwise.

If I have a moderately strong hold on a good piece of the galaxy I can almost count on most of the others hating me. it's kind of a balancing act. if I'm small enough, I can get a friend or two to stop the vote. if I'm big enough, I can stop a vote off myself. but if I'm moderately big, they will all hate me and vote somebody else into high master. Final War, ready or not.....

[Gilgamensch]

One thing you might want to do, check which medium AI is having war with whom. This AI shouldn't be to unfriendly to you, but if you declare war onto the other AI, you might be able to get a treaty with the other one (allience), sometimes you just have to declare and they will offer by themselves............

[da_hal]

another trick is to do the Versaille: give whoever whatever it takes to keep you safe during the vote.

usually, if you are in 3rd place, you are very safe. however, this rarely happens in small-medium worlds (if it does, you will probably get run over pretty quick by the bulrathi or something.)

In the Versaille strat, this assumes that you are vulnerable in 2nd place, with say the sillicoids or somebody ahead of you by a substantial margin.

If anybody is at war with you, they will automatically vote against you. If they declare war right before the vote, you are screwed. However, you can sort of force them to declare peace by giving them stuff.

Always work towards appeasement as soon as you can. In a worst-case scenario, humans hate you and set off an alliance firecracker line so that everybody hates you. Even if you can defend yourself in the short-term, you will lose the vote.

On the other hand, you can use the Holocaust strategy. When you are in danger of losing the vote, immediately attack your smallest neighbor, ideally one with only 1-2 planets. If you win, you give yourself some breathing space in the next vote. If you lose, you would have probably lost anyway at the vote.

[vmxa1]

I rarely ever even ask for an alliance. I can't recall doing it, but I probably have.
Anyway all you need is to get one race to abstain, If you are not in a position to prevent a win with one race not voting, you have a big problem.
Well I should say this is after the first 2-4 votes. The early votes will have many abtaining, if not you are dead.
Once you get out a to the 5th vote you should be close to 1/3 of the votes yourself. Then one race should be enough to stop the council.
So if you see that all hate you, start the bribing. It is usually not hard to find one race to switch to a no vote with some tech(s) or cash. I prefer techs.
I have not found grabbing another planet just before the vote to work. It does not seem to let you get the extra vote so soon.
You could get a trade agreement with one of the races that are not to be selected by the council. Often a trade deal will push the race to your side.
The only time I have a real scramble is when the select race has a bunch of alliances. It is hard to swing one of those to your side. I will start earlies by trying to frame them. I do not want to go to final war real early as the bottom raceswill now get the best techs and it willbe very hard to conquer them.

[Urban Ranger]

You can always try to provoke a war between a "friendly nation" and the country with the most votes. If you can do so, you don't have to worry about having somebody else voted as High Master.

[ravagon]

Going to Final war is always fun.
The tech-sharing of your opponents can be lethal. All of a sudden one of the minor empires becomes the most dangerous because they suddenly lose enough ships to scrap the remainder of a few classes and suddenly they have a whole new set of modern, lethal designs that start taking their toll.
I had one game in which I held about 40% of the galaxy before going into final war mode and it was only barely enough. I ended up taking heavy losses faster than I could rebuild for turn after turn and lost a dozen or so planets before I could complete enough exterminator squadrons (centred around dreadnought sized ships packed with engines, bombs, lightning fields and stream projectors to kill enemy planets) to take out enough of the enemys nearby ship production worlds to give my defensive fleets a chance to recover.

[vmxa1]

One good thing about Final War is that you can steal from anyone as they all have the same tech. You can often catch one of them without much defensive spending.
I have gone along tryin to steal from the larest race and making very little progrees until Final War.
I switch to the weakest and get in some quick steals.

[da_hal]

there was a trick to getting out of final war, i forget exactly. i think if you eliminate the winner, and then cause revolts in the remaining players, it "forgets" that you lost the vote.

[Gilgamensch]

Originally posted by da_hal
there was a trick to getting out of final war, i forget exactly. i think if you eliminate the winner, and then cause revolts in the remaining players, it "forgets" that you lost the vote.

Doesn't sound like you would need it though...................

[Father Beast]

something I've discovered about final war. even though they all share technology, they seem to do research individually. In other words, when I went to Final War recently I held about one third of a small galaxy, while the rest was evenly divided among the other 4 races, and their tech research rate was as for races of merely about 3 planets, while mine was of 7 worlds. they seemed to research so slowly.....

interesting thing, is if one of the races is very small, say confined to one planet, their counter espionage will be so small that you can steal from them most easily, and get techs from them all. Thanks for that one, vxma1.

I am running a long one at the moment. I have long since researched everything, and I've taken over enemy worlds on foot periodically for the dual purpose of gaining all their recent techs, and turniing their worlds into huge gaians with my tech. since I refuse to build factories on my temporary stays, they don't gete anything from me when they take the world back (or more often, bomb it to death because they can't beat me on the ground. I figure once I do all their worlds, their pop will be more than mine and I'll start to have a fight.
but it'll take a while. I'm up to year 3600 and they just got neutronium bombs..... I mean, when I first went to final war, I was the only race with anything faster than retro engines. I guess that's what I get for playing on easy...

[vmxa1]

Father Beast playing on impossible means I need all the help I can get on techs. If the war breaks early, I need to scramble for the missing tech. They will probably be ahead of me at that point. Your tech cost are so much higher than theirs at this level. If the Psilons are in the game, they still get ahead of me with a much smaller empire.

[Father Beast]

OK, I recently got stomped in an average game, small galaxy, 5 opponents. Played as the Alkari I got up against the humans, silicoids, psilons, and darloks. Darloks were on a single world, and the meklars were off in a corner by themselves. I got 5 worlds, less than the silicoids and only 1 more than the unusually bloodthirsty psilons.

Like you suggested, Around 5 -7 years before the latest vote, I played kissy face with the humans and psilons, letting the silicoids, my main rivals, be. The psilons became quite friendly fast, and regarded me highly. the humans were nice enough and signed a non agression pact, and oddly enough, the silicoids offered me non agression!!

but then the Impotent Darloks declared war on me, and I thought, "who cares?". then the Psilons went to war with me with no warning (what I get for dealing with an erratic), then the silicoids and humans declared war after dropping their NA pacts, one year before the vote. and guess what happened with the vote?

sometimes, it's just not your day.....

[vmxa1]

You need to know who is the other nominee. You do not want to spent time getting friendly with them as they will not be voting for you.
Then look at who has wars with them and get on their good side.
If someone is an ally of them, it is often a waste to bribe them. I have gotten them to abstain, but it is very rare.
I do not start more than 3 or 4 turns before the vote, as that is too long. I am presuming that you have enough vote to stop them, if you get one abstaining race. If you need more than that, you are too far behind. I am talking about after the third or 4th election. The first few votes, you will need more than one race to abstain.