How to beat 3:1 or 4:1 Hard AIs?

I'm not really qualified to advise because I've never tried 1v3 on Hard successfully. But I do have a question: how many turrets are you building?

Enemy AI attacks can be repulsed extremely effectively by parking your defending fleet in a mass of turrets and a hangar (if Advent) that are covered by a regeneration building. If you survive to get a phase disruptor built, and you're playing a race that can further disrupt jumps (e.g. Vasari's colony capship Gravity Warhead), you can make them pay heavily if/when they retreat.

-- Retro

It helps if you have no more than two chokepoints to defend. If you're in a spot where you're defending more than that, you're pretty much screwed, IMO.

Try doing a map with different star systems, simply so you wont all of them down your throat at the very beginning.

I would also suggest trying to go as fast as you can in conquering(of course easier said than done). No time to turtle up and wait. After a few hours all of the AI's will have maxed out their fleet capacity and you will be HIGHLY outnumbered no matter what you build. Strike early.


If you would rather turtle. Find a map with a good choke point. Clog that point up and stop the enemy from traveling into your empire. Then build 10+ novaliths on the systems further back and set them all to auto-fire. Eventually all of the enemy planets will be taken down, it might take a while. Once the enemy loses all of their planets, they lose. It's kinda a cheap strategy, but it's worked for me before.

I can say that I've defeated the max amount of AIs on hard before but it took hours. It's hard to say what you need to do though.

In the more recent builds, I can take on maybe 3 or 4 locked alliance unfairs at a time. But AI's are very different from human players (most of the time...). AI's don't have variable strategies. Sure, you might lose to them once or twice, but once you get the hang of how they operate, it's smooth sailing.

Also, it's quite easy to beat the early bounty. I don't know why, but maybe it's because allied AIs don't help each other out. That bounty is quite vital though. It's basically a second fleet for you that isn't blowing your planets up. Always try and win it.

Hmm... what else. Oh yeah, AIs have this weird 1 minute lag when starting. Use that nice buffer time to rush someone if you can.

I guess I'll just list down anything else that's noteworthy:
1. AI seem to be much more afraid of attacking than most human players. In fact, it's possible to defend fringe worlds with one or two turrets via the following strategy; build 2 turrets at planet. Enemy raiding fleet comes, start building another turret. Replace any destroyed turrets as they are destroyed. Of course, you have to adapt this strategy as you see fit, but it usually works quite well (a bit tedious when you are being attacked at 11 different planets at once).
2. The entire purpose of defensive structures in this game is to buy time for a fleet to arrive or stall the enemy long enough so you can attack. Don't ever expect your defenses to destroy enemy fleets for you.
3. A turret is more or less the same cost as a light frigate except with crystals. It also has much more health, armor, and damage. If you want to defend a planet, don't build light frigates en masse before sending them there, build turrets. A large mass of disorganized ships aren't going to win you any battles and is just going to waste your money. A few turrets can keep the enemy busy long enough for your main fleet to smash his planets. (This only works against AI)
4. The AI's early raiding fleets usually have no way to bomb your planets (composed of a few light frigates) so for the first half an hour or so, if you avoid building any major installations at your outlying planets, you can save a lot of trouble as those raiding fleets won't be able to do anything (except maybe blow up your extractors).
5. Chokepoints are important. Get them. Make sure you can defend them. I recommend building one repair, 2 hangars, and as many turrets as possible at chokepoints, but it really is up to you. The reason isn't to defeat enemy fleets, but merely to make the AI afraid of attacking (put fighters in the hangars).
6. Repair stations are a godsend. The AI doesn't really target them but they can really save you. Try to get them and hangars as soon as possible.
7. You might have noticed, but the AI doesn't really try to get those independent extractors that are in gas giants, asteroid fields, and the like. If your map has lots of those, rush for them. They're well worth it because they don't have upkeep like planets do, and the AI will almost never try to get them.

That's all I can think of really.

The way I did it was simple. I don't think it says they have to be allied, just you can't be allied with anybody else at the time that you destroy them.

-Get the max amount of people on a huge map.

-Play like you normally would.

-Let the Hard AI's beat up on the medium ones you put in there.

-MAKE ALLIES WITH WHOMEVER YOU CHOOSE.

-When you go to destroy a hard player, dump all of your allies when it is safe for you to do so.

-Re-ally with people then dump them again when you are in position to kill another one.

It does not simply have to be you vs. 4 AI's. You just can't be allied with anybody when one of them dies. This is how I did it.

That's interesting, I sort of assumed that they had to be on a locked team. Mainly because I'd won several free-for-alls without getting the "beat 2 AIs" acheivement. But in retrospect, I generally did enough diplomacy to get an alliance, and didn't break it.

- Gus

As others have mentioned, many strategies will work, but a few come to mind that make things easier. Generally, focus on getting an advantage in research and economy while keeping conflict confined to 1-2 fronts. With minimal upkeep and losses, and a fleet able to strike fast, you can blitz through systems with your superior tech.

1. Expand fast, but wisely. Get a good portion of the map, but don't overextend yourself. In the initial expansion rush, try to keep your borders confined to 1-2 chokepoints, even if it means one less asteroid (unless you can guarantee safety on that border without diverting your resources of course).

2. Research. Being able to get those volcanic and arctic planets early can be a good boost to economy. The same with trade ships, etc. Better research also leads to better economy.

3. Early ship selection. There's no real need to keep a huge fleet of ships at first. The AI isn't a human player who'll know how to rush well. Going for a colonizer capital ship fast often works well depending on your map size. Prioritize expansion over military ships. Defense of your empire will be easy if you expanded correctly (see below).

4. Defense. Remember those chokepoints? Manually place your repair stations, hangers, and gun platforms around those points to best effect. The AI isn't very creative--a good setup can keep you safe for ages with some ship support here and there.

5. Diplomacy. With 4-5 other players on the map, there's no reason that you can't easily be allied to 1 or 2 of them at any one time. That's one less front you have to worry about. I've never tried starting the game with allies, but you can certainly make alliances midgame without losing the achievement.

6. Pirates. If you've kept up the above tips, you should have a distinct advantage in economy to afford these. Early on in the game, pirates can be quite annoying - send them after your favorite target.

7. Offense. Divide and conquer. Keep the pressure up, but don't sacrifice cap ships. Don't feel bad about sneaking into a planet that 2 AIs are fighting over and colonizing it while they're preoccupied with each other (usually this works better if one of them is your ally though). I tend to use capital ships since they get stronger without you expending more resources. Remember, the AI isn't a human player. You can easily max up a fleet of capital ships without risk even without support ships (a suicide tactic usually).

8. Trade. Don't be shy about trading. Although in the long run, not trading means more aggregate resources, you actually get more resources by trading wisely and expanding than waiting for resources to pile up. Unused resources = wasted resources. With multiple hard AI though, the market will boom or crash lots - make sure to keep an eye out.

9. Culture is important.

I too have gotten achievements vs. Hard AIs in a free-for-all; they definitely don't need to be teamed. I know you can't be allied with them at the end, but I'm not 100% sure about alliances mid-game. Can you confirm this? If so, it would make this tons easier.

I'm in the middle of a 1 on 3 hard AI game (sitting as a saved game on my PC at home) and I'm doing quite well. I found that by going with the Large, Multi-system random map you have a lot more breathing room. As a TEC player it gives me the freedom to set up my ideal trade route along the system's outer edge as all three of my opponents are in neighboring systems. I may have gotten lucky in planet placement (the AI either goes to my terran planet neighboring the star or to the pirate base, which weakens them for me) but I've found it easy to hold off their advance while my main fleet returns from its expansion mission on the system periphery and handily defeats them.

And I dont consider myself particularly good. I'm an hour and a half in and barely have half of my home system colonized. I tend to focus on capships early while researching and building up my frigate and cruiser fleet behind the front line.

I've played through a couple more games.

On a Huge map (Aerolian Sector, 10 players, 6 stars, 67 planets), with 4 of the players set to Hard and 5 set to Normal, I won but did not get the achievement. I had cease fires with other players, but never a peace treaty. I tried to go to war with everyone moments before executing any kill, but screwed up on the 2nd to last Hard player. Actually, I don't know how that player died, since he still had planets. In any case, I didn't get either the 3 or 4 AI achievements.

On a Medium map (Dopplegangers), I beat 3 AIs who weren't allied with each other. I deliberately avoided any diplomacy at all because of the previous game, and when I won I got the "Comp Stomper" (beat 3 Hard AIs by yourself) achievement. Despite the fact that they were not allied at game start, it felt like they were, since all 3 empires sent wave after wave of fleets to my star to conquer me instead of going after each other. I'd gone for a very early Returning Armada and 2-3 phase portals per planet, so I managed to turn them back. Eventually I ended up with 2 very large fleets, one for home defense and one attacking fleet.

Prozack2k3 claims you can make temporary alliances so long as you're at war with everyone when you make the kills. I have yet to confirm this or disprove it, since I flubbed that. I did establish, though, that it's not enough to win the game without an ally at the end.

- Gus

Just a note that the first sentence explains the second - Hard AI is autoset to prefer to attack the leading player. The early RA would have made your Military #1 by a huge margin.

-- Retro

I wonder how they define "leading." If you decide to go for economic boom with the TEC instead, and deliberately keep a relatively small military, do you think they'd still gang up on you?

- Gus

I just played on a random huge single star map with 6 hard ais and played as tec. i went for economy research and diplomicy early...military last. i had the best economy and the worst military for a long time and never was attacked by more than 1 ai at once. So maybe military strength is the sole factor in the ai decided whos the 'leading' player...

On another note...i always build one or more factories on key choke point planets, or just one hop away, if i do get attacked my strong economy can churn out a defensive force anywhere on the map in a moments notice. I never build turrets. i instead spam hangers and always build 2 fixer buildings(lol...cant remember name)close enough to each other to keep each other healthy and all my logistic buildings healthy. the fighters are usually more than enough to hold assaulting fleet off long enough to build some ships of your own. I find this strategy works rather well for the tec especially becuase of their strong economy.

a decent RA tactic would kill the AI

I tried playing a Large / Random / Single Star map with 8 Hard players as Advent, and they left me alone until I'd pretty much assimilated one of my neighbors. I was #5 in terms of Fleet, but #1 in terms of Empire, and all 6 remaining Hard players came knocking at my door. I could have made an alliance with several of them, but because I missed the achievement doing that in Areolian Sector, I tried defending instead. I ran the Red Queen's Race for about 5 hours, defeating wave after wave but never managing to expand out of my corner. Then I gave up.

I tried again with a Large / Random / Single star map with just 4 Hard players, and the other 4 turned off. I played as Vasari, but didn't rush for Returning Armada. I expanded rather conventionally for a while, and eventually shifted to Returning Armada. I won without much difficulty, though it was very time consuming since all 4 players pretty much concentrated on me from that point on. I avoided all diplomacy and ended up with the Comp Stomper achievement.

Honestly, I think the Phase Gates were more important than Returning Armada. Yes, RA gave me huge forces, but I'd still have lost big chunks of my empire if I couldn't shift my defending fleet arbitrarily from planet to planet in a single jump. Now and then I had to combine my offensive and defensive fleets because I was facing a 2-player combined fleet.

I simply don't see how you do it as TEC or Advent unless you've got a map which gives you a large segment that can be defended by 1 or 2 adjacent jump points. The thing that killed me against 8 players was that the systems I had to defend were 3 jumps apart. Or 4 jumps if I didn't run the gauntlet through the 2 jump points (wormhole and asteroid field) the AIs used to stage the attacks.

- Gus

I find it is ALWAYS best to nab all those asteroids outside the chokepoints. Why? they act as an early warning system. With the tecs phase jump detection research you can see enemy jumps up to 2 jumps away. with a planet outside the chokepoint you can now see enemy movements 3 jumps away. Giving your defending fleets more time to react to a possible assault. Nab these outlying planets. Upgrade pop just enough so you dont bleed cash and dont spend any more on them...Also an invading fleet will stop to take the planet giving you even more time to bolster your defenses

Tactical defenses, (very important) make allainces against the biggest faction, second biggest if its you, multiple, diverse fleets(no LRM/Flak spams)

Tactical defenses, (very important) make allainces against the biggest faction, second biggest if its you, multiple, diverse fleets(no LRM/Flak spams)

That's good advice if you just want to win, but I learned first hand that if you want the achievements, making an alliance can cause you to fail. Prozach2k3 claims you can get the achievement even if you make an alliance IF you're not allied with anyone when another faction dies. I can't confirm this, since I blew it the two times I tried that. Someone always died one way or another while I had an alliance going. The only really safe way to win, if you want to get "Comp Stomper" or "I Can Do That Hal" is to never ally with anyone.

BTW, I made a mistake in my earlier post - I got "I Can Do That Hal" with the large / random / single star / 4 player map. I already had "Comp Stomper" from Dopplegangers, and "Toaster Roaster" from one of the small 3 player maps.

- Gus

Sigh, I had this whole long list of tips, but the forums ate it. Sooo not typing that out again.

Short version:

Even when locked together, comps don't actually work as a team. Use this understanding to help gauge what is defensible and what is vulnerable.

Expand early, as much as you possibly can. Get 10-15 frigates with a colony cap and just take every planet you can, in more than one star system if possible. Don't expect to keep them all, just cancel out the underdevelopment tax and keep the ones that can be easily defended with a few turrets. Build 2-3 colony/scout frigates and cap every neutral extractor you can manage. They are huge in the early game econ and NPCs generally ignore them. Use the crap out of culture. Aside from the obvious econ and combat bonuses, this is a key mitigation in how quickly you can actually lose planets. Even when you don't have a colony in one that was recently attacked, you still essentially control it.

Don't think you have to save every planet that gets hit. There will be some degree of 'musical chairs' going on with your systems for much of the late game. You just need to be hurting your enemies faster than they're hurting you. Try to cripple one enemy faction at a time. Since they can't unlearn the fleet caps, their econ is quite vulnerable later on.

One/some of the previous posters were right about orbital defenses. They are essentially a time ablative. Use a lot of turrets and some repair bays to keep an enemy army stuck fighting structures as long as possible.

Use heavy cruiser based fleets for def, 2-3 caps that support cruisers and can prevent jumping. Def is a breeze with Vasari as you can use jump ports in every system. Use bomber carrier based fleets for offense, with caps that support bombers and have colonize/defense mechanisms. Bombers require way less babysitting for the tedious structure killing, and can do their jobs from an easily escapable position in the gravity well.

Bottlenecks are not required, though I think that large maps are a lot more viable than small ones. You will not win this quickly, barring any strangely effective rush techniques I don't know about. I have a lot more information, as fighting multiple comps vs me is basically how I play the game for fun. PM if you want more detailed information.

edit: difficulty in winning this, I would wager, is easiest with Vasari, (1 jump to anywhere in defense, gravity bomb and subverters to trap) easy with Advent, (Malice + Cleansing Brilliance = bye crappy NPC fleet) and moderately difficult with TEC.