I have issues with hard as well. I know you have to keep moving ALL THE TIME and never stop producing ships...thats all I have heard.

If you'd like to try to play a 2v2 against AI, you can email me at squigglethegamer@yahoo.com or im me on xfire at squigglethecow

maybe, since we both havent beat a hard AI yet, we would figure out how to kick their butt.

Scout ahead.

If one enemy is near (1-2 phase lane) , rush them with your caps + 10-20 LRF and they'll die.

If all the enemy are far, take your time to build up your force then kill the nearest or strongest enemy. In the mean time try to get a cease fire with at least one of the other enemy. Repeat until you win.

And remember to keep your enemies/allies equally weak, and you can manipulate your allies AI to attack other AI.

I have a similar issue with this.  I enjoy the combined tactical and strategic aspects of the game, and have no desire to engage in old-school RTS "whoever clicks fastest, wins" sort of gameplay.  Being on the offensive from the very start seems to degenerate to this sort of thing - it's whoever can pump out cobalts the fastest, then micro-manage the battle so that you have a couple of extras frigates left at the end.  I certainly can't click faster or micro-manage better than the AI, which has perfect and realtime access to the combat stats of each ship in the battle.

Part of the problem seems to be the maps.  I use randomly generated maps, and I frequently get stuck with completely crap positioning.  Are there good, non-random maps that people would suggest for starting out in an FFA game against several hard AIs?

Umm I had problems with hard AI as well.  Then I actually try to finish some of the missions, which resulting in alliances and resources from my AI allies.  Never stop producing ships, and don't make too many mistakes.  I actually likes to play D as tech and build up my fleets, so don't forget to build the repair bays.   You need at least two separate fleets in the beginning to handle their rushes (Single fleet works wonders, too).  I keep on needing more metals as TEC, sometimes, so I recommond to research the higher metal collecting civ tech, but that's just me.

P.S. Why don't you try to play the medium sized map "Fire and Ice?"  The map is pretty straight forward, best for 2v2, and have easy chock points to control.  Best of lucks.

Stepped up to to Hard versus the AI a while ago. It sure doesn't mess around, does it ?

As stated above, keep moving. Don't turtle, don't count on static defenses. Don't let them build a huge fleet. If you don't see their fleet for a while, you can bet when it does show up it will be nasty. Hard Ai's tend to mix a lot more ship types, so don't SPAM your own fleet. I use static D, a lot, but mostly as pirate defense or to augment my defense fleets. It can turn the tide of a mostly even battle but won't defeat a decent sized attack. I tend to use one or two repair bays, and the rest hanger bays (fighters only).

You can't afford to waste time or resources on luxuries. Plan what you need in advance. Don't waste energy on techs you won't use right away. Decide what your fleet combos will be in advance, and plan the techs you'll need as buffs. If you're going for economy, this is doubly important, since your fleet will be weak at the start.

I've found that I can't live without a large AoE weapon ( Advent Cb/Malice combo, TEC Marza MB in 1.09 ). It will stomp out the small stuff, and allow the rest of your fleet to clean up whats left. So getting your caps to a decent level is IMPORTANT. Can't strees that enough. Nothing turns the tide like wiping out 20-30 LRMs in as many seconds. At the very least, the enemy has suffered a huge economic loss replacing ships.

If you're defedning ( huge warning bells if you are ), fight under the protection of your repair bays. Research repair cruisers ! Bays won't help you deep in enemy territory.

Sometimes losing a battle isn't a bad thing. As long as they're crippled afterward, it's still a victory of sorts. I like to have a few planets with three frigate bays, so a new fleet is just a few minutes away. It's a flaw in the AI. It can manage much better than a human ( out clicks you every time ), but it tends to not have very many frigate factories. If you both loose a large portion of your fleets, multiple factories gives you a huge advantage as long as you have the resources to rebuild at will. I find late game I have more money/resources than I can spend, so this works very well if you're going to grind against the AI.

Lastly, the fleet is everything. if you aren't hitting your fleet cap continually, or sweating how to get the cash to raise it, something is wrong.

Also, don't bother with a second capital ship...

Hard is rather fairly easy to beat. Unfair is also easy to beat. I usually battle in a large map or medium. Average time for Hard to beat is 2 hours. While unfair is 3-4 hours.

Unfair Aggressor is usually where you get your hardwork. They will attack you regardless of where you are in the system. I've had an Unfair Aggressor AI skip all the planets in a large map and rushing me with 25 Cobalt and 1 Kol.

I'm a TEC. I have never used any other race nor do I want to. My TEC strategy is always like this:

Build in Order:

Capital Ship Factory

1 scout

1 Akkan

6 Frigates

2 Civ structures

Research Trade ports

Buy 2 trade ports each for your 1st 3-5 planets.

Buy a 3rd one if you like. This should give you a lot of credits early on the game.

It is 'hard' on hard, I think perhaps unfairly so - for example, some opponants seem to have 3/4 capital ships very early, along with a fleet of lesser ships!

I have medium nailed as far a winning tactic are concerned, so I thought Id try hard - I got squished big time. I tried again, this time just pumping out ships to beef up the fleet, ignoring the more rewarding (to me) tech trees - this worked much better, but a lot less fun, and certainly too frantic (from a RTW lovers' perspective)

In the end, I compromised, and set two thirds of the nine AI players to hard difficulty, and the rest on normal. This turned out to be a lot more balanced, and after a few days, I won last night (7Deadly Sins Mod) I played as TEC, having the colonise CS first, followed buy Colbolts, and teching them up for lasers, shields and the disable enemy power core tech. I then get the Marzda Dreadnought (I have found this is one of the strongest, after constantly losing the Kol CP's to enemy fire) I then focus on getting the 5 military structures for the Kodiak cruiser - once you have this, you really do have a fighting chance - even more so on hard (the Enforcer is you're playing as Vasari is more or less the same)

I then try and scount for ship graveyards and make half a dozen colony frigates, these derelict ships are a fantastic idea, and really do help beef up your fleet, or leave them orbiting one of your frontline planets.

Later in the game, I found it's best to use up all tactical slots for the planets, as at the very least, it will take an enemy force a lot longer to take your planet, and give you more than enough time to send reinforcments.

Overall though, hard is, I think, just a little too hard, and a huge jump from medium, from my point of view at least.

It may be just me but smaller maps with fewer AI seems harder than massive 10player FFA maps. You are forced to fight contiously instead of letting the AI bash the shit out of each other while you turtle to bits, research all your stuff and then just rampage later on. I have lost a few 1v1 vs hard AI in my time because of crap positioning and bad luck but I have yet to lose a huge FFA against the AI. So I suppose my tip would be to just keep playing small random maps until you get better at it. Playing a 10hr long game will definately not help you improve as much as 10 times as many shorter games. And I suggest keeping the random maps, otherwise you will just learn the tricks needed to beat a certain map but still lose every time on any other map. If you just want to beat the AI then as people suggested you can swing the balance towards you with premade easily defendable maps but you will not improve as much.

Blimey I downgraded to Easy from Medium as I found that too hard! I'm spending 3+ hours just getting a foothold in easy and beating back pesky pirates!

thx everybody, most of this might help me, escpecially the ships DURING peacetime idea

heh, try going unfair, that's a real test!