The Silicoids And Sakra Are Laughing At Me

[vmxa1]

I am not awae of any preset triggers for research. By and large the AI will, after encountering you, will evaluate you. If you are seen to be weak and they are Xeno they will make a demand or attack.

If you have become the top dog, they will soon be coming for you. Mainly it is a balance of strenghts. This is why you can build empty ships to prevent attacks (temporarily).

Try to note fleet build ups and be premptive. I like to see who has the most ships and try to attack their fleets, before they can surprise me.

Note that even if you cannot take out all of their ships, you can keep the count down to where they cannot defeat your planets.

You do not want to look up and see 10 BB's ready to rock on your planet and it has only a star base and ground batteries. Even if you have a race that has more stuff, it could get ugly.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Widget4
So I end up usually trying to build a better fleet. However, I used to always lose my advantage in tech due to spying. So I start off making spies from pretty early on. I looked at my statistics though in one of my games and 20% of my maintenance costs were going to spies. That's a huge amount of capital. Any ideas on the optimum number of spies in the beginning, middle, and end game (if you get there)? Or what's the best way to use spies?

I just looked at a game I was finsihing and I have 40 spies and they are only costing 1% of my income. I did not have all that many systems as I was not making transports any more, just bombing the planets to dust.

So if you are paying 20%, I suspect the empire is not going as well as it should. This could be due to race traits or structures or lack of planets.

I noticed at the early stages I had 66 income and 2 spies, so it was 3%. Spies are 1 BC a turn you would need a lot of spies and very low income.

You can only have something like 64 spies on the HW and I forget how many on each race. I am betting you do not have that many as if you did the game is just mop up.

So it is going to take 10 spies with 50 income to be at 20%. 50 income is about one good system at 10% tax (default).

[Widget4]

Maybe I looked at it wrong. It might have been 2%. After 6 hours, I can get blurry eyed. Okay, I just looked at my most recent saved game and it was 4%. Whew, okay then I'll keep pumping out spies. Now that I think about it I did try a super spying strategy with an uncreative, Lithovore race where I had like 63 counter spies and then something like 37 active spies. That may have been the 20%. The only tech I got out of it was terraforming. LOL. I aborted that game, but it may have been the one I looked at to analyze my maintenance costs. I was on a Lithovore binge for a while so that might have been what happened. I thought 20% for spies was ridiculous. Oops, sorry for the confusion.

[Zoetrope]

Widget4: I was under the impression that all the AI players get Omni for free from the game engine (of MOO2 and almost every other game). If so, then in single-player Cloaking is useful tactically but not strategically.

A second consequence would be that the Elerians are grossly underspecified for an AI opponent. They'd be more formidable if the explicit Omni were replaced by another 3-pointer such as RHW LHW. If one chooses Repulsive as well as Feudal, another 6 picks are freed up; there are many options: +2 Production; or +20 Spying; or increase Ship Attack to +50 and make them either Stealthy or Warlord or increase Ship Defence to +50.

[Widget4]

Originally posted by Zoetrope
Widget4: I was under the impression that all the AI players get Omni for free from the game engine (of MOO2 and almost every other game). If so, then in single-player Cloaking is useful tactically but not strategically.

A second consequence would be that the Elerians are grossly underspecified for an AI opponent. They'd be more formidable if the explicit Omni were replaced by another 3-pointer such as RHW LHW. If one chooses Repulsive as well as Feudal, another 6 picks are freed up; there are many options: +2 Production; or +20 Spying; or increase Ship Attack to +50 and make them either Stealthy or Warlord or increase Ship Defence to +50.

I agree with you. I've been kind of duffing my way through the game up to this point and I'm still flubbing my way around in it. (I'm sure that's pretty obvious ) In the real world I'm kind of an unconventional, left-of-the-Left, gadfly. When I play this game, though, I tap into a side of myself I had no idea I had- the obsessive, yet slipshod, micromanager inner child side of me. Anyway, I'm playing Omni pretty much so I can observe the game and see its development.

Once I feel confident that I finally know how this game works, I'll probably dump Omni and go back to the unknown universe. I think it's more fun bumping into a Rich Gaian planet than hunting around for them on the map. At any rate, my cloaked converter strategy was one of desperation. If my empire was 15 minutes away from crumbling (it usually is), then my default was to go for the cloaked converter, hit my enemy's choice planets, and try to destroy his fleet through economic hardship. My experience with that last stand strategy, though, was that if my ships weren't cloaked when I showed up in the AI sytem, then the AI invariably would have this awe-inspiring, crash-the-game sized fleet (actually it was probably just his Southern Fleet) in whatever system I tried to hit. His Northern Fleet would be heading for my Ultra Rich Gaia planet system. Ah, those were my old MOOII days. I lost most of the time, but the game was still a blast. There was a real pleasure in having no idea what was going on or trying out a reflection shield or whatever. I wish I could start this game for the first time all over again.

At any rate, these forums have really covered a lot of the aspects of the game that were only touched on in the manual. It's pretty clear to me now that it's not impossible to hammer the AI and win consistently. I think turtling is probably a more difficult game to play, but I'm not that familiar with the complications of a blitz strategy. At the moment, I'm in the start of a blitz game and I'm having some map problems, not enough outpost ships, flat tire with no spare, stuck in lots of mud, and the time is ticking away. It's a fun way to play.

Thanks for the advice on the racial picks. I went through one of VXMA's saved games and the log he posted for the game. I learned a lot from that. It was blitz game. So now I'm fiddling around with tele, warlord, omniscient, +30 Extreme Viciousness style races. I confess that a lot of my racial picks don't make good sense, but generally it's because I get impulsive or fall in love with a racial characteristic or just feel like bucking the trend. (I'll take up the mantle of the creative warlord, what the hell.) Whoah, well that's my MOOII rant for the month. Thanks for the help. I'm going through a MOOII binge at the moment and I'm starting to kick the Sakra and Silicoid around for the first time. That's a good sign. Who knows? Maybe I'll try a multi-player game at some point.

Thanks,

Moondoggie Widget4 on Alpha Ceti Pi

[vmxa1]

I know what you mean by the wish you could start fresh. I feel that way about Moo1. I miss the games where they show up with stacks of 32K ships and I have scramble to survive it.

I never see those stacks unless I am on a small impossible map now. In those games, I don't want to see them when I do. But those are the breaks.

[Aabraxan]

Originally posted by Zoetrope
Widget4: I was under the impression that all the AI players get Omni for free from the game engine (of MOO2 and almost every other game).

I think they do. A while back, I began to wonder just how the AI races always seemed to colonize the best planets in their respective neighborhoods so quickly, so I began playing omni to see what was going on. The AI never sent scouts to check out systems before sending colony ships, and never lost colony ships to monsters. From Turn 1, in an average tech galaxy (iow, with no exploration), their colony ships headed straight for the best unguarded (as in no monster) planets in range. I don't recall the AI races ever losing scout ships to monsters, either, but I wasn't really watching for that, either.

[vmxa1]

I am not sure about the so called Omni for free, but they do seem to have a knack for ignoring those obstacles.

I have screen shot here that has a ship (frigate) going to a planet 9 parsecs away and it has ext fule cells and they have D fuel cells. So that should be 3 + 6 = 9 parsecs.

Fine, they did not go to Ubar and it is only 8 parsecs, but has an Eel. The funny thing is that the Eel will not attack you anyway.

It is too soon to say that it is a fact as the others cannot reach any systems with monsters.

[vmxa1]

Ok, I am onboard now. All of the systems that have any monsters have been avoided to date by all races.

Many races have systems only 3 parsecs away now and they have scouts sitting on a planet doing nothing. So that is very suspicous.

[Zoetrope]

There are at least two levels of Omni, perhaps three:

(1) Visualising all planets. This is like having a space telecope that can image distant worlds on the continental scale. You gain this knowledge from some leaders, or from scouting .

(2) Spying all uncloaked enemy ships and monsters. The AI seems to have this ability.

(3) Seeing cloaked ships. The Omni pick gives this ability, but does the AI have it? My ships are rarely stealthed or cloaked, and I rarely play Darlok, so I haven't tested this, but Widget4's comments suggest that the AI doesn't see claoked ships. Is this so? If it is, I'll start using cloaking techs more often in single-player. Unfortunately I can't test this myself, as I'm under a sworn "no computer games" ban - until i complete my studies.

[MORON]

AI does anybody else play Pre-Warp, Average, Impossible, 8 player, Huge games? That's what I've been trying to beat

There is alot of ways to win, even for an relative n00b, once you get how the game works.

Personally, the easiest (least effort) for me is Uni Tele Warlord -GC Repulsive and blitz everyone to death. Early MIRV nukes can clean up 2~3 races early, and with that much more pop the universe just falls quickly as 26x MIRV nuke BBs of doom kill stuff as fast as you can move...

Tech:
Research Lab -> Reinforce Hull -> AF
depending on scouting, either tech up chem for fuel/pollution/armor, super comps/clone if no one is around and there is somewhere to colonize. Follow that tech to deep core and by then you should have half the galaxy. With deep core, one can simply swarm the remining races with sheer numbers, even if they have good tech.

[Widget4]

I just realized one other restriction I impose. I don't accept council wins and I don't attack the Antarans to win. Does anybody else play that way or do you usually win through council votes or heading off to the Antaran homeworld? Just curious. I can't believe I forgot to add that because it definitely makes it tougher.

Widget4

[Aabraxan]

I typically decline council wins &, for a long time, just turned "Antarans attack" off, which, obviously made an Antares victory impossible. I just recently turned the Antarans back on. By the time I can beat the Antarans, I can usually beat the other (AI) players.

[Widget4]

Just an update. I finally beat an 8 player, Average, Pre-warp, Impossible, Antarans Attack, Random Events game. I didn't win by council vote or an Antaran homeworld attack (these can be handy though if defeating the AI is a sure thing). I took out 4 races: Sakra, Klackon, Mrshan, and Psilon. I found a race that I liked: Repulsive, -10 Ground, Poor Homeworld, Aquatic, Unification, Creative. It was a pretty straightforward turtle strategy that came down to a war of attrition between me and the Psilons after I sent the Sakra into extinction. I finally figured out that one of my main problems before was bad ship design. Thanks for all the advice. My armies were undefeatable, my ships . . . yada, yada, yada. Now I can rest easy knowing I'm one of the best ever, uh, on my machine.

Widget4

[vmxa1]

Way to go, just an FYI, but if you make the custom race using a picture of a given race, that race cannot be in the game.

Often a creative pick would want to not have another creative in the game. So use the Psilon pix for your race. One of the values of that tactic is that a turtle game will let that othe creative be around long enough to get some of the better tech and maybe trade it or have it stolen. This means you may have to face those techs.