MOO1 - Hard, damnit!

[blackholearmy]

I've been playing, and in the 1-2 weeks I've played, I mastered simple, easy, and medium. (All with the Silicoids) However, Hard gets to me. I tried as the Sakkrans, and simply invaded them until they died, due to the fact I had huge amounts of troops. I tried Psilons, but couldn't get into them. I tried Darloks and Humans, but diplomacy aint my gig.

I've beaten Impossible with the Silicoids. (Colonise all crappy planets, then bribe people 'till the elections.), but this doesn't work on Hard.

Any strategies for militaristically taking over the galaxy (Any good combos, special weapons, etc)?

[Zoetrope]

I'm sorry. Did I hear you say that you've beaten Impossible as the Silicoids, but not Hard? If so, how do you explain that?

[vmxa1]

Play Klacs with any size map at hard. Maps larger than small, use the fast expand and scout all stars approach.

Small I tend to want to grab the hopefully 4 habitable ones I can get and grow with no conflict. Maybe get one or even 2 with small conflict.

Then turtle until I get HEF and go take down races.

If you can win at impossible wit the Coids, you should not have much trouble with hard. I know you can get a nasty start location and a string of bad breaks, but that is not common.

Try a medium map with klacs and concentrate on expanding. Do only the research you need to expand and maybe a some combat items after you get a few planets up.

Send out pop to get new colonies running quickly. Use leap frog to reduce the amount of time transports are in the air.

Send enough to get the planet going asap, but not so many as to cripple the planet they come from.

[Shiver]

Couldn't get into Psilons? Might wanna try 'em again, they're probably the most powerful race in the game. Psilons get a +50% research bonus, and since they're rated "good" with every tech that's actually a 175% research rate total. Giving them an artifact world exaggerates this further. Let them have Orion and the game is already theirs. Even the Klackons and Meklars with their increased productivity can't hold a candle to how fast the Psilons tech up. And teching up in itself makes your productivity soar. Once you reach into the late game, you'll be completely unstoppable.

[Darkstar]

I always found "Hard" much more challenging then "Impossible" in MoO1. Something about how the computer plays versus how I play. Haven't managed to pin it down. So when I want a really challenging game of MoO1, that's the setting I use.

[Shadowlord]

What I found difficult, on the normal difficulty level, was when the Klackons were using stacks of 32000 ships against me. The peculiar thing was that they'd actually RETREAT, and the fact that they weren't using their gigantic fleets to smash my colonies to pieces. They did seem to like to smash my fleets and then leave the colony intact, though they did destroy 5 or 6 colonies total (This was on a huge map). Later on, for me, it was simply a matter of moving my fleets armed with death rays around from Klackon colony to Klackon colony obliterating them until they were all gone. By the time I was doing that, our tech was roughly equal, except I had High Energy Thingies and repulsors on my ships, and used those with boatloads of death rays. They never adapted or stole that idea, but I suppose they didn't want to have to give up their gigantic fleets. They did, however, have ships with death rays. They just couldn't get close enough to mine to USE them. :P

In the end I blasted their last colony while their gigantic fleets were trying to get to the previous destroyed colony. They had a tough time catching up what with me taking out 5 colonies per turn.... Oddly they never thought to split the giant fleets up evenly to defend each of their worlds and attack each of mine at once. If they had, I'd have been toast.

[vmxa1]

Shadowlord how did they get death rays, was this Moo2? Did you let them steal them?

[Shadowlord]

It was MOO1; I accidentally traded death rays to my allies at the time, the Silicoids, and the Klackons acquired them within 50 turns or so afterwards. I'm guessing the Klackons stole them from the Silicoids (Since the silicoids were engaged in a perpetual war against the klackons).

Either that, or the Silicoids evilly traded death rays to the Mrrshan, who traded them to the Klackons. But that's unlikely since the Mrrshan were so far behind in tech that they'd have had nothing to trade with anyone else.

Edit: I was in 3rd place with the Klackons in 1st and the silicoids in 2nd. The Mrrshan were in a distant 4th and way behind technologically. The other couple empires had been killed already by someone or other (not me). I was about even in tech with the Silicoids, but the Klackon were way ahead. I allied with the Silicoids against the Klackon, and took Orion (the klackons immediately captured it from me, but it didn't matter), and let the Mrrshan do whatever they felt like (I was previously allied to them, but they dragged me into war with every other race in the galaxy!). After a long long while I finally got up to the point where my ships were actually beating the Klackon ships most of the time, and from then on it was a rush from planet to planet smashing the colonies to bits. Klackon first, then Mrrshan, and then finally when the game showed no sign of ending of its own accord or bringing up elections again, I ended my alliance with the Silicoids and smashed them into little pieces of quartz.

[vmxa1]

I never go to Orion until only one planet is owned by the AI or I have researched all tech in non blitzing game.

The AI never goes there to fight the Guardian anyway. I would never trade any good techs to the AI. Often I will just stay at war once one starts and never give peace.

I don't like to have trade deals with them after the inital ones, if I even do them. Just a preference.

[Darkstar]

The AI will almost never use repulsors itself. I've only seen that a very few times.

The AI will never fight effectively against repulsors. It doesn't design for long range (2 tile) weapons, and it won't just move back to normal weaponry range once repulsed (like, you will, after you get repulsed from the AI ships). Once you have repulsors, you can hold your own versus almost all AI designs, regardless of tech levels. So long as they don't have long range (2 tile ranged) weapons. AI needs a tweak for that.

[vmxa1]

That is not my experience. IF the ai has repulsors, they love to use them on large or huge ships. In fact I find it a real pain as I do not like to use range 2 weapons.

Now the AI does not have to have the repulsor tech and I won't trade it until I have HEF.

I also find they will frequently have the heavy version of weapons, if it comes with one. I find that it hurts them in the early combat. A large with heavy lasers is not going to fair well against a gatlin laser ship, because they will have only a few guns.

In small maps I sometime will make a large ship with my best gun at the time. Either lasers or Gat. If laser and I fit 28 and face them with 2 heavy lasers, they die. This lets me get that planet that I must have to not lose the vote.

[Shadowlord]

They were definitely using repulsors against me, well, until they had death rays. :P

[MagusTLSC]

For militaristic takeovers, you should usually begin with Large beam barges, hopefully with at least Ion Cannon (but don't hesitate to launch Laser Barges if you are under early attack or need to start an early war), coupled with Medium bombers, hopefully with Fusion Bombs. Those beam barges, with periodic updates for new computers/drives, should hold you for a large chunk of the game.

[Defaultuser]

The AI most certainly use repulsors, they don't hesitate to do so.

Furthermore, this particular tech is among the most heavily guarded in technology exchange (in the same realm as robotics controls).

But that's to be expected for such a useful item.

[boolybooly]

well I just lost a hard Psilon and restarted it from scratch (because I keep a save of the start turn) and I won it, the difference was I used a more aggressive expansion plan in the early game and with a few more planets (10>7 in medium map) I was able to make a few more ships and do quicker research while the enemy were deprived of those planets and so it was twice the impact and that turned the tables

every planet you take from the enemy is two planets worth of advantage

in the end I was invading (after removing bases) without bombing and getting extra techs along with fully built planets.