You have to watch the replay (and hope it works). As Advent, it's easy to counter another Advents Illuminator spam with carriers.

Depending on the map, it's sometimes a good idea to expand with a colony cap on one front and a colony frigate on another. Especially if there are neutral resources and you have to build a colony frigate for those - you might as well speed up your expansion. Colonize bigger worlds with the Mothership and asteroids with the Missionary. Neutral resources are very important.

Scouts don't work unless it's a rush map and the opponent doesn't build light frigs or carriers to counter the scouts. Scouts can be handy against a quick Vasari Assailant rush but once there are other ships in play they get useless in combat fast.

If the map layout has multiple asteroids nearby your start position, waiting for a cap ship with colonize can be fatal.  If I pump three combat frigates and a colony frigate, I can have my first colony up and running while your cap ship is still in production.  If I pumped three more combat frigates and a second colony frigate, I have two colonies up and running when your cap ship is just finishing.  If there are other asteroids accessible or neutral extractors, I can send a spare colony frigate and a few cobalts up to take it while my capital ship works on well defended colonization targets.

This strategy is a hard counter to the standard colonization cap opener for a few reasons.  First, by choosing colonize as your first skill, you basically can't rush until you're level 2, by which time my excessively quick expansion has already payed off.  Secondly, unless you're Vasari, I get pretty much uncontested access to neutral extractors in the early game.  Thirdly, your speed of colonization is going to be slower than mine because your capital ship can't be in two places at once to colonize multiple asteroids simultaneously.

There are a few weaknesses to this opener.  The first is that to do it you have to pump those first few combat frigates right away, so your first scout frigate is coming out very late.  This keeps you out of the loop if a rush is coming.  Secondly, it's expensive to build multiple colony frigates early on and pay for the extractors and civilian planet upgrades, which can slow this down somewhat in the short-term, but long-term it sets you up for a great economic boom.

I can't tell you if this is what your opponent is doing, but it sounds to me like you're colonizing as fast as your mothership or evacuator can, but because of the map layout your opponent can colonize multiple planets simultaneously, something a colonization cap can never do.

If we're talking desert/terran planets, then yeah, I'd go for the cheater explanation, as well.  If we're talking about asteroids it could just be that he was busy expanding while the OP was waiting for his capital ship to finish.

Without a replay, we can't say for certain.

Yeah i can see how u could get 6 asteroids if u do cobalt + colonizer frig way.

Otherwise he cheats lol.  I remember the old cheat I uncovered that was patched. I attacked some dude with 30 sieges liek 15 minutes intot he game lol.  I am no cheater, I just did it for kicks.  His reaction was priceless

You know, I didn't really give serious consideration to the guy cheating (although for the life of me it sure feels like it).  But are there really versions of this game hacked to cheat?

I dont know of any cheats in 1.12, but earlier versions had few bugs

I suppose it could be a pro posing under a smurf account, pretending to be a newb.  I didn't really consider this earlier because I didn't see how or why a pro could get his rocks off doing such a thing.  I figured it would be a total waste of his time and energy.  I mean, I'm no newb, but I'm certainly no tier 1 pro.  I mean, the last thing I'd want to do if I was a pro was play people who were absolutely no competition compared to me - it would be no fun.  But who knows?

Just found the guy online tonight and played him again - same results.  But this time I THINK (tried, at least) to set up the automatic replays.  So I will check it, and post back here later.

was it tyr, jj, berz, sid, cykur?

he may have 2 separate small fleets or ur just really really slow.  btw, super economy always goes with super fleet.  I know cuz I am pro and on the game scores Im generally 1st in economic spending and gathering plus 1 in fleet .  And unless Im rushing I always upgrade civilian infrastructure right away at the begining of game.  and just kill the seige frigates at the planet and colonize then build a turret there to deal with the other ships so ur fleet can move on, this really works.

This discussion has had me thinking.  I think I may have a new strategy brewing.  Hmm...Victory is in reach.

well, the fact that you guys are fighting all this out with low amounts of cobalts, discs, and ravs leads me to believe the game is probably not very skilled on either side, no offense, so i would rule out smurfing (keep in mind a guy with 50 wins on a new account is not a smurf, jus a guy making a new account to have less learning losses visable) if you get within range of someones hw and attack it and they are able to force you off without a feed using only discs, then you jus wasted your time. ALWAYS take the roid first, you can usually cap a roid and build a frig factory/repair bay on it before the other player can counter properly, then its a matter of who has more income and better micro. Also, if he is doing this kind of expansion as a vasari on a large map odds are if you scouted out you would see he has most of the nuetrals and is fiercly micro'n them. but as i said earlier he doesnt sound very skilled or he has taken smurfing to the next level and is pretending to suck too. All in all, dont build discs/ravs/cobs... ever... unless the other player spams carriers. if there are that many roids on the map for people to colo go lrf's and research a repair bay, or jus fast tec to carriers.

anyway dont be discouraged, if this guy is expanding that fast odds are his resources will be low at first due to his upgrading of planets (a common mistake that gets a lot of people killed is expanding to fast), id be willing to bet if u start using a decent lrf spam with a marza or egg/prog you can steal many of these roids from him early on. not to mention that if he is not using aggressive nuetral grabbing all the money you are spending on labs and lrf research he is spending on upping his new roids, that means that when u hit him with a good lrf rush and kill his work drones you will essentially stick him with nothing to build but low lvl frigs. 15 kanraks or 12 illums will destroy any amount of discs he can build as long as you keep spamming ships to the front and stop him from building any more labs.

If you try all this and he still seems to be unrealistically fast and he is NOT controlling the nuetrals, whisper me his name and ill play him myself.

G/L

-bronze

My opening (Vasari) is as follows:

(A is small map - I don't play small that often; B is large w/ space map - I've refined this a bit.)

A.

1. 2-3 scouts to explore the nearby worlds and take any neutral extractors (latter is VERY important as Vasari)

2. extractors on home planet

3. work my way to cap ship factory, then build Evacuator

4. build however many LFs i can afford

5. colonize 'roid or two nearby, or least defended world with all non-scout ships.

6. build 2 warfare labs

7. research LRF and sentinel

8. build enuf vitsurka labs for ice and volcanic colonizations and first phase detection (3 i think)

9. colonize nearby worlds, using all possible ships to minimize losses

10.  max out defenses at frontline worlds.  maybe surrender a few planets for a contiguous line of connected planets for easier and more effective defense

11. build up for fleet.

B.

1. build 5-10 scouts and set to autoexplore

2. build extractors

3. build LFs & Evacuator

4. colonize nearby asteroids - max 2 jumps away - or least defended terran/desert if no roids close enuf

5. if other players nearby, mad grab for planets, only upgrading infrastructure to 0 undevelopment tax; if no nearby players, firm up my planets and fleet as I go.

6. make fleet upgrades as needed, rush my Imperial research getting phase detection and everything needed for max RA

7. expand, start building up my Warfare research and defenses as needed.

My cap ship order is generally 1) egg 2) Devastator 3) egg 4) devastator/Vulkoras/Carrier depending on opposition tactics.  if they swarm (like the AI loves to) i go devastator.  if they go for the lined slugfest, i go desolator.  eiether way, I'll usually end up with 3-4 desolators, 6-7 Devastators, 2 eggs, 2 Marauders, and 2 carriers.  first thing i do in a major brawl - cast all volatile nanites and phase missile swarms.

It just means this is a rush oriented map and they aren't getting around to building anything else.  The skill involved is in how fast the guy is expanding and killing.  I'm guessing this is a 9-10 planet map or something.