Trying something different

[Garth Vader]

So I tried a game as Feudal last night. It's been a long time, and since it worked out number wise I also decided to try Repulsive, since I heard many of you often use it.

How do you get by? I always trade for the techs I can't research, but want, like Heavy Armor and missile base, plus many others.

Without planetary defences the antarans hammered me. Interesting note, if you defeat them I guess they don't come back very often. If they win they come back like every year stronger.

[Gilgamensch]

Without planetary defences the antarans hammered me. Interesting note, if you defeat them I guess they don't come back very often. If they win they come back like every year stronger.

Yes, that's right. I think it is every survived attack one more ship, and after 5 survivals the ship is being upgraded in size...........

For the tech's:
SPYING, the only way..........

[vmxa1]

When I play fuedal the game is over before they can even come to attack. I have no need of any tech and do no research at all.
No spying as no one will have much tech and will be dead before turn 75-80.
In a game with other types of race the Anties usually do not come for me in the first few attacks as I am not not the big shot.
When they finally come it is too late, I will have enough defense to stop them.
I am use to not trading or making any deals, so Rep is basically free for me, except I will probably not get a Megawealth early.
I like it as a sort of handicap, no trades, no extortion. It is too easy to build up a small fleet and make the AI give you systems and tech and cash. So I prevent myself from taking advantage of those exploits. Advance tech start are the worse, you refit the two BB and immediately extort a few races. That is just too easy.

[Garth Vader]

I must have too high of standards for ships because I didn't go out attacking right away. I like to have a minimum standard of ship before I do anything.

I never extort because I don't think of doing that anyway.

[Whoha]

with feudal and longer term games I generally go with lithovore so as to have 2x as many people researching to counter the loss.

Lith/Tol or lith/creative are both fairly good with feudal, but they stand on their own merits in any event. creative/lith/feudal is really good because ship building tends to be a problem with creative races.

[Garth Vader]

I went with warlord/tol/++ind in my race, although next time I might alter that slightly.

Usually I have no problem filling up and exceeding my command points, so the extra speed of ship building in feudal would go to waste. That's why I went warlord so I could afford a bunch of weaker ships, since I could build them faster!

[Whoha]

with creative you will find problems producing, lithovore and feudal deal with that. So thats a fairly good creative race.

[Garth Vader]

With Creative I usually go lowg/-10 GC/-10 Spy and subterranean and some combination of +'s or HW improvements for the last 6.

I have never had problems producing with that.

Although feudal/creative might be interesting. I'll have to try that, the extra tech might help make up for the slow researching. I could take repulsive too. Hmm.

I don't play lith very often. I'll have to try that again soon too.

[vmxa1]

Feudal gets research reduced by 50%, that is hard to offset. Given a creative race is not truely a research race you will need lots of planets and pop to offset it. They are meant to be a war like race and that is why Warlord and TransD is so good for them.
Add in Omni/Tele and RHW and then play with normal tech and you can start to grab planets very soon.

Sound like a fun game Garth, I have so many new games right now I can't get to Moo right now. C3C next week on top of that.
Just starting a Deity PTW game while trying to play Warlords IV and Disciples II addons. Oh, not to mention the Demo game of Moo2 we have going. I also want to go back and resvist Moo3 now that I have the patch.

[Whoha]

"Feudal gets research reduced by 50%, that is hard to offset."
yea thats why I also pick lithovore with feudal. Lithovore helps with production and research since you lose 1/2 research to feudal but have 2x as many people researching at first, and lose 1/2 production to pollution but have 2x as many people there as well + 1/3 and 2/3 off ships.

[Garth Vader]

Success. I ended up taking creative/sub/+1 Ind/+50% growth to offset the feudal/repulsive.

It's not done yet, but it's over. Some tough times, 'Coids attacked me before turn 70 (normal start). Missile base saved my colony but it took me a long time to be able to break the seige.

Once I could push them back it was nice because they were also +1 industry which made their people very nice workers for my empire.

Then the Mrrshans and Bulrathis attacked me at the same time, Mrrshans hit a few colonies of mine but lost their colony that gave them the range to hit me any more. They both had missile base and fighter garrison, so it took time to slog through the bulrathi, but that's where I stopped last night. I think I have like 50% of the galaxy pop.

[vmxa1]

I hate those blockades. Now you can give them their payback.

[Garth Vader]

That blockade was funny because I had a missile cruiser built but it couldn't kill their battleship. So I'd attack each turn and do a little damage then retreat. It would leave eventually then come back.

Finally it came back with reinforcements that I couldn't even try to fight until I had a better ship.

[vmxa1]

Yeah, that is the down side of a creative race if they have early hostilities. They can not muster up a fleet to defend for soooo long and will often be fried if they are hit before they get up missile bases.
That is why a huge map is their best friend.

[Garth Vader]

I don't understand why you guys keep saying creative is slower at building, is it because as an alternative you'd take Uni or some kind of production bonus?

Because there isn't anything inherant in creative that would be slow in fact with extra morale buildings and pollution control it would seem to be better.