AI sneak attacks often

[Whoha]

Uni works good for cybernetic, remember it is a slight +production pick and it allows much easier colonization, but the ship repair is far and away the most noticiable of cybernetics benefits.

[logic_error]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Since you do not have the cash to rush the MB, it is trade. This is the consequences for expanding beyond your ability to defend.
You should either have a fleet or cash before you move to planets that can be in conflict.

Hey, I know, but I can't have done everything wrong. Have some mercy for my game. I kinda played this one in "fast forward" mode, but I will anyway start a new one with a slightly modified race.

Now any racial picks can be use for fun, but if you are not winning at the given level, I would stay away from some picks.

I have won on hard level dozens of times. I just wanted to ask how to play defensively in the early game.

Cyber is one of those picks. Here you are at T112 or so and have no ships, so what is the value of Cyber at this point? Zero.

I disagree. Cybernetic halves food and freighter demand. Since it is much easier to produce production than food, the ability to eat production is a great advantage. Why everybody misinterprets Cybernetic?

[Dry]

pre: I'm speaking here of pre-warp games !!!

I was a fan of Cyber.
My first impossible game, I won them with a Cyber race (uni+tol+cyber).
Now, I have learned that there are beter (re: easier) races to play.
Cyber are fun to pay, but they are not the fastest to expand.

With a cyber race you definitively need a production enhancer, otherwise you'll miss the 'expansion' wagon and you will not be able to catch up with the ohter races.
This means Uni, +prod and/or RHW.
This means a Cyber in facts cost you at least 6 picks...

As a Cyber, you will be very, heavily tempted to research Hydro (vs Bio), because with 1 you feed 4 of your citizens.
And you will be right.
But this means you will need less farmers, and this means that your Uni advantage has a lesser effect on food production. Needing 4 farmers instead of 6 on a population of 30 isn't really an 'edge'. And it makes the 6 points of the uni in fact expensive.
For this reason, I keep Cyber for non-Uni races.
Or to rephrase it: when I'm Cyber, I do not need to be Uni.

Cyber has a good advantage in an other case: you chose to be LowG.
With a lowG race, you will definitively have a food problem. For a long time, before you discover the PGG, almost only your HW will be able to provide you food. Here , the Cyber will help a lot. Build hydro everywhere, SoilE only on your HW, and that's enough.
LowG, cheap neg pick? ... yes, if you are Cyber.

Now, this being said, my best Cyber race is:
Cyber, Sub, +Prod, 50%Gr, L-A HW, LowG, -.5Food, -20ShDef

But it can't beat my current best one:
litho, sub, LA HW, LowG, -20ShDef, -10Spy.

[logic_error]

Dude, why would ever you select Low-G?! IIRC on normal-G worlds, it gives -25% penalty on everything until you manage to research gravity generators, which come very late in the tech tree.

And one more an advantage of cybernetic: it decreases or eliminates the starvation caused by blockading.

[Dry]

Originally posted by logic_error
Dude, why would ever you select Low-G?! IIRC on normal-G worlds, it gives -25% penalty on everything until you manage to research gravity generators, which come very late in the tech tree.

And one more an advantage of cybernetic: it decreases or eliminates the starvation caused by blockading.

Dear dude ,

first, as you said, this 'hurts' indeed on normalG planets. Now, considering that the really intersting planets (large, huge, R, UR) are usually HG, there is no lost of prod there (same -50% as a NG). As 1/4-1/3 of my colonies are HG, 1/5-1/4 are LowG, this puts the number of NG planets to 1/2-2/3. The difference with a NG is not that big.

second, it does not give you full 25% malus on everything. It gives you plain -25% on food & research, but not on prod. When you have enough population, the prod of the last citizens will be wasted in pollution. Your higher production will be reduced by your higher pollution, bringing a global prod reduction because of LGs to ~20%.
So it indeed hurts me on food: full 25% malus (therefore the cyber or litho).
My typical planet development is: everyone on prod and the building queue is: AF/Barracks/CC/RL/PP/SB/PS (insert HF after Barracks if cyber).
As long as the PS is not build, only my HW has scientists.
This means that I usually get the PGG a few turns after my first NG planets build the PS.

Thake a +1 prod for 3 picks and you got a +33% (w/o AF), +25% (with AF), +20% (AF+RM).
Compare it with -5 picks to have only -20% prod on half of your (non-productive) worlds for a short time. I call that cheap.

And one more advantage of cyber: even under starvation, they grow.

[logic_error]

I think you calculated it incorrectly. The gravity penalty on production on normal-G worlds seems to be always 25% , because grav penalty is reduced first in the calculations.

On the other hand it is interesting that the penalty on high-G worlds isn't affected. Something like 75% would have been more logical.

[Dry]

Originally posted by logic_error
The gravity penalty on production on normal-G worlds seems to be always 25% , because grav penalty is reduced first in the calculations.

Yes, that's what I say.
Say on a planet you should produce brutto: 25, a lowG will produce only 20.
But... 25, means say, 1 pollution, while 20 means no pollution.
So the difference is: 20 instead of 24 = 20% (not 20 instead of 25 = 25%).

I do that also on my first colonies (the planets in the Home system). Sometimes, before I got the PP and with only 2 citizens, building a marine barrack will increase the prod by 1. But at the same time, it will also start generating pollution, losing the extra 1. So building the barracks is a waste of time.
My Home Colonies usually build AF and RL and then start housing like hell to send ppl to new systems. No need of barracks if you have less than 3 ppl.

[vmxa1]

To tell you the truth I have no respect for cyber as a serious pick. As I said any pick can be used for fun. Eating production is not a good thing. Here is a list of a consenus of good races and I do not see cyber among them.

These are not my say so these are/were commonly recommneded on the web and kali.

Unification government
Tolerant, +1 production, large
Aquatic, +1 production, +50% growth, rich, large
Aquatic, subterranean, +50% growth or +1 production
Subterranean, +1 food, +1 production, large
Creative, aquatic, large
Aquatic, omniscient, artifacts, rich, large
Aquatic, telepathic, rich, large

Democracy government
Lithovore, rich, large
Aquatic, +1 BC
Creative, aquatic

Regular government
Subterranean, Lithovore, +50% growth, large
Subterranean, aquatic, +100% growth, rich, large
Tolerant, Lithovore
Tolerant, +1 food, +2 production
Aquatic, +100% growth, +2 production, rich, large
Creative, aquatic, +1 production, artifacts, large
Creative, Lithovore, rich
Telepathic, Lithovore, artifacts, large
Telepathic, feudal, aquatic, rich, +50 ship offense, omniscient


That is a lot of races and nary a cyber to be found, there is a reason for that. The reason is that cyber races lose in MP games. The reason they lose is they eat production.

Top 5 bad picks:

Uncreative, cyber, -growth,-bc, feudal. LowG is not far behind.

I don't want to debate about cyber, there is nothing to debate. If it had been said that this was for fun, I would not have said anything. I interpreted it that this was being treated as a serious and good pick, that is why I spoke up. Individual sucess with that pick not with standing.

My point is not that you can't win with it, but that it is inferior. Any bonus for ship combat is of no value, as the AI will lose at combat anyway, since you get to pick the fights. I mean most players will be taking -SD and not be worried.

[vmxa1]

I don't mean to beat this dead horse, but I felt I should run the race with the same settings.

Since I had the saved game, I had those settings. So I played a game. It verifies what I suspected. This race is very weak on production.

That does not matter much since this is at hard level and you cannot do anything to lose. It was so easy that the AI never even stole from me, this with a -spy pick. You get to demand tribute and systems and frankly it was not even funny.

So I suspect that using this race at hard is not going to tell anyone any useful.

[vmxa1]

I took this race to impossible and got Elarians stealing right away and then they attacked me. They could only blockade my HW, but could capure/bomb the new colony by T88.

I had saved the T0 and swapped out the the traits of Cyber and -Spy and -BC for -SA, Rep and took RHW and +P.

Now by T84 I already had missile bases on both planets, 3 or 4 spies and researched N. scanners. So no steals, no attack.

The new colony had 3 pop, instead of 1. 50% more BC, nearly 100% more industry. Built are RL/AF/Bio/Hydro/Missile/Cloner, with a star bases underway. Try that with the cyber.

I had twice the reserve and tax was at 0 (cyber was 10%).

The Cyber was 2 farmers 4 workers 10 scientist
The non was 3 farmers 3 workers 10 scientist

The other colony was 0/1/0 and 0/3/0.

The funny thing was that the cyber game got the leader with 10 RP (ships) and still was losing ground in research. This is due to poor productivity and eating of some production. At times it needed some scientist to farm or do industry, that was not needed by the other race.

[siron]

So far i saw 2 cyber races at kali:

the above mentioned uni tol cyber. (of course uni tol ind+1 is better but with good planets this cyber race can compete in 4ways.)

and in uni lith ban games:

dict tol ind+2 cyber is one of the strongest races.

but i never saw there cyber without tolerant.

(edit, upps: there are of course blitz races with cyber. feudal tele cyber etc...)

[Dunnagan]

Re: AI sneak attacks often

Originally posted by logic_error
Just a moment ago I played on a large galaxy, 7 opponents, hard. I tried a colonizing blitz and managed to colonize quite a many systems until the Elerians sneak attacked on me. I really had no fleet, so I couldn't defend at all. I grew tired and quit the game. I had even gave the Elerians tech gifts and avoided annoying them.

Was is just that I was playing with too many opponents on that galaxy and there wasn't enough room for early game expansion? This annoys me because the AI so often attacks on me during my colonizing phase. Is there any good ways to prevent AI sneak attacks in the early game?

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elerians always seem to slack in my games