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telove

Join Date 06/2008

Some newbie questions

Hi all, I know this is asked by every newb who joins

but I hoped to get some custom advice if possible please.

I have done the tutorial, and then I have just played the random small 1vs1 game, against an easy opponent. I like to play as TEC, but I will try the others once I get used to the game. I played these games twice and won both. First time, it took me 8 hours to win. Second time it took me 5. I think next time I can maybe shave it down to 4. But I have some questions and hope to get some help.

1) How long should it take an average player to win that map? (By going for a destroy the enemy victory). And how long for a pro player? I'm just trying to get an idea how much more I should be hurrying it up. For example, should I be aiming to do it in 4 hours (in which case, I'm not doing too badly so far..), or should I be able to win in 20 minutes? (In which case, I have a LOT of improvement to do!).

2) Question 2. Is there any way to know how good my army is? What I mean, is that I build a bunch of units like a secondary army, to defend my front line. I find that if I have enough, I can then send my main army to take over new planets, and the AI doesn't attack me because it knows it can't get through my secondary army protecting the front line. When there are multiple routes though, I end up having to make a second and third and fourth entire army to protect the front lines.

So it would really help to know whether these are strong enough. Because if they are too strong, I am wasting valuable units (possibly even dozens of expensive units...) for no reason. And if they are not strong enough, then I get attacked and that is really bad. So I tend to overdo it and have lots of units defending these front lines, and I think that REALLY slows me down. I do this because I don't know whether the army is strong enough. Is there any way to know?

3) Question 3 - last one - but the biggest:
Please help me tidy up my start strategy. I know there is no perfect option, and I know you should change what you do based on what is happening etc. And I know that everyone has a different plan. And I know that I should develop my own style.. (whew!). But I would like to explain what I do, and see if anyone can help give me some tips to improve/change it. Here goes:

First thing I do is build two scouts, and I manually explore with them.
Then I build 6 Cobalt Light Frigates.
Then I build the Protev Colony Frigate.
At the same time I upgrade the "Civilian Infrastructure" to full, and I build as many mines as the home world can support.
Then I send my fighters to the nearby planet to kill the defenders, and then I bring in the frigate to capture it.
At the same time, I upgrade the Logistics of my homeworld, and then I build Civilian Reasearch centres.

Then I basically start attacking nearby planets and asteroids and I try to capture them all ASAP, and I build a capitol ship as soon as I can, to help with that. As I capture a new world, I do the same routine - Upgrade civ, add mines, logistics, then add a military or civ research place.

I just read that I should not attack planets, and instead just focus on asteroids to start with. But what else can I change or improve?? My main question about this, is how much should I hurry to get the Orbital Refineries? In my last game, I figured that I needed to get as many planets as possible, and get refineries going as soon as possible, and that would give me the most money and resources over the long term, but I think I built them at the expense of my army and the consequence is that I didn't attack fast enough. I know I have to balance this myself with practice, but basically my question is... should I just focus on attacking at the start and forget about the refineries and trade posts? Or should I build the minimum units necessary, and get those refineries/trade posts build ASAP, and then start mass producing units?

Thanks

strategy

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1) the maps are meant to take a while, don't worry. The bigger the map is the longer it takes

2)not too sure how to answer that, there is a rating on your overall strength in military, economy ect. on the interface. i try to use a small fleet for defense, located in a position where they can reach the frontier planets quickly (even though the planets are likely to take heavy damage during travel time)

3) I would reccomend doing this
Build a capital ship factory
Buy 100 crystal off the black market
upgrade infrastructure
build scouts
build frigates
when teh capital ship factory is done, build the capital ship (1st one is free) with the colonize ability instead of buying the colony frigate.

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Make that 200 crystal. Here's the basic startup for ANY race.

0.) Purchase 200 crystal off the black market first. Crystal is the limiting resource for at least the first ten minutes, and without the startup 200, you will lag behind the other players badly. Also, buying it earlier makes it cheaper. This is because the market spikes once all the other players (in multiplayer, at least) buy immediately. Strive to be the first one to buy crystal.

1.) Upgrade your Housing Facilities or whatever the hell it's called. This is on the Upper left corner of the planet upgrades screen. This is to increase your starting income, which you have to do anyways, and might as well be done as soon as possible.

2.) Set one construction frigate to building a Capital Ship Factory and one construction frigate to the crystal asteroid. While the Capital Ship Factory is being built, set it to produce the capital ship of your choice. Surf the forums to find information on which one, and remember that there isn't one definite answer to basically anything in this game. I personally recommend for newish players like yourself to get the cap ship with the Colonize ability.

3.) Build 2 scouts as Advent or TEC, more like 3-4 for Vasari. More on larger maps, but no less than two. Vasari scouts have the ability to exploit the neutral asteroids on asteroid belts and plasma storms and the like. TEC and Advent scouts do not.

4.) Build the two metal extractors.

5.) Send your Capital ship to clear the nearby asteroid of ships. Alternatively, if your scouts have found another nearby planet with more ships, send your capital ship there and a second fleet composed of frigates to the asteroid - it should only have two lame ships on it.

After that, it depends, but this is ALWAYS the right order to do things in. All of these steps should mesh together - for example, if one of your construction frigates is done, set them to building the second metal extractor instead of buying your scout.

Cheers,

-ScaldingHotSoup

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Thanks both of you

I think I have the very start going well now. Thanks. All I need to know now, is what I should do after I have my first planet and asteroid. Is it worth trying to focus on research to build up my economy and afford a big strong army later? Or is it better to go easy on the research, and spend most of my money on just building up the army right away?

The thing that catches me out, is the orbital refinery and trade. It's hard to know which is best, because without it I am losing lots of money, but to build them, it is expensive and comes at the expense of building ships. So which is best to focus on first? Or do I have to just decide that based on what my scouts find?

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I disagree with buying crystal first, after doing some calculations on the effect/price of the Civ 4 upgrade. However, in the very early game, I don't think there's anyone who won't tell you to go for a capital ship right away. They need to level up, serve as tanks against the neutral ships, and cost only the price of the structure.

2) If it's a 1v1 game, just give up a planet or two and keep attacking, you'll kill them far quicker. This other info is given under the assumption that you're not talking about 1v1. Use one defending fleet, and fortify the attackable planets with repair bays/turrets and a phase jump inhibitor. These serve as time ablatives to keep your planet from dying while you work your way back. They generally won't even kill the PJI by the time your fleet arrives, then they'll try to run. Easy pickings.

If you can't afford to fortify multiple access points, consider giving up a planet or two if it will make your defense movements easier. If you have two attackable planets both connected to one back-rank planet, rally your fleet there and jump into whichever gets hit. Vasari have a particularly easy time with this as you can make all the important planets into Phase Stabilizer Nodes. You can't spread your defense ships too thin. The hit and run attacks are annoying, but not dangerous. Losing a planet and a defense fleet is dangerous.

edit for new questions: the first thing you should be doing is colonizing as many neutral planets as you can. If this means civ research for volcanic/ice planets, then so be it. Civ infrastructure 1 for asteroids and 2 for planets needs to be bought asap for any new colony. Almost all your money is going to be going into that and extractors. Once you're out of new planets to grab, or often sooner in big maps, pick up the first fleet cap upgrade and start getting an army together. LRM frigs or their counterparts are usually the best option for a middle game fleet. After that, you have several options. Most prevalent of these are teching up your empire and economy, or attacking someone while building new ships to cover your potential defense.

I use trade ports in just about every game, as their return for investment in the middle game is quite good. The best time for these is the point at which you are comfortably defended and have enough income coming in to throw them down without halting your research. There is a good rule of thumb to use if you plan to build trade ports. Only build one a maximum of one logistic building at each new planet in the early game, and none at asteroids. That way, you won't have to buy any logistic planet development to support the ports, which will cut down on the direct investment and let them start working for you sooner. One trade port per colony. Orbital refineries, on the other hand, are only situationally useful. On some random maps, there may be a huge shortage of one resource in your empire. Stacking 3 refineries on your only ice planet can be a good way to passively open up a production bottleneck on crystal. With heavy upkeep, though, these take so abysmally long to pay for themselves.

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There is one important - nay, vital - choice you have to make early on: Go for capital ship no. 2, or scrap your capital ship factory for a partial refund?

I personally go for option one - buying another ship in medium-sized or larger maps, where you can afford to cut some slack early on if it means gaining an advantage 15 to 30 minutes later - a second capital ship could double your expansion rate. Whereas, in medium or small maps, scuttling it provides a small but immediate resource boost which can be used to upgrade or expand your army.

You also need to strike a balance between 'teching up' - i.e., researching - and massing a fleet. This balance is also naturally tipped in favour of either side by the size and layout of the map.

Overall, I'd recommend you play a few more games, try to get some Achievements under your belt - a great way to make your acquaintance with the game - get a feel for the factions, ships and techs and learn what is good when. I find it works better than rote-memorized build orders, and is also more fun. Experiment. Use that pause button to get a good overview. Remember that you can issue orders while paused, even if they don't always show up in-game until you've unpaused it - in fact, in single player, I like to hit the space bar (I remapped the pause key there) immediately when the game begins, look at my starting position - especially the number of phase lanes leading from my homeworld - and issue my starting orders from there.

A little hint: Always build at least as many scouts as there are phase lanes. You can set them at auto-explore in the start, to simply get the blank spaces in your map filled out. That way, you get to know your neighbourhood, and find those worlds the ripest for the picking. Also, always get your first, free capital ship fast. It's always worth it. If you don't get the colonization-capable one, remember to save up for your colonizer, too.

Other than that... zoom in every now and then and enjoy the view, and have fun!

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Thank you Orion's Folly, so much, that was a really great reply!

I think I now know how to really improve my strategy, and in future games I will do much better I'm sure. I can see a couple of flaws in my strategy, based on what you said, so I think next time I'll be able to fix that and do much better. Thank you

I have one last question before I'll feel ready to start trying the hard AI though. It's the same one I mentioned earlier about not knowing how strong my defence force needs to be. I am currently playing a game. I am TEC, it is a small random 1v1 game, and I am playing against a medium AI this time. I am doing well and I am about half way though the game. The map has about 12 or so planets, and I own half the map. All my places are fully upgraded, I am rich and well researched. Next step is to take the pirate headquarters planet, and then just clean up the enemy which won't be too hard (just long). But I always go too slow because of this. Basically I have a big attack force to take out the new planets. But then I have 2 or 3 front line planets and I need to defend those before I send my main attack force deeper into enemy territory. So I keep little defence groups of units in each front line planet, and they hold off the enemy. But I have no idea if they are way too strong, or maybe even too weak. I know this varies depending on the difficulty of the AI, and how far into the game I am etc.. but I am hoping one of you can just give me a general idea.

Each group looks like this:

1 Capitol Ship
3 Kodiak Heavy Cruisers
3 Javelis LRM Frigates
3 Light Frigates
3 Kielo Command Cruisers

The enemy doesn't seem to be trying to attack any of those groups, but I am never sure if I should beef it up a bit before I go on the major offensive, or maybe it is even already too strong? I have three of those groups, and may even need a fourth, so a few extra units in each one could be better used in my main attack force. (My main attack force is about 5 times the size of that).

Thanks

-----------edit-----------

I notice there is a little line in the bar surrounding the planet when you zoom out. And those little lines increase as the force of units gets stronger. So perhaps I just need to aim to have a specific number of lines?

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Honestly, all that I do is make sure that I am well-scouted, and have enough frigates on each border to stave off an impromptu bombing run that the AI sends. "This won't hurt a bit..." anyone? Just keep scouts circulating through the area to make sure you are aware of the enemy's troop movements while you clean up whatever target you have. Also, try to assassinate any scouts the enemy might have at your border colonies. Hangar Defenses work well for this, I would probably build Fighters to take out those fast-moving scouts. Phase Jump Inhibitors might also be a welcome addition to make sure the enemy can't see beyond your border, though that can be bypassed with fourth or fifth tier empire/harmony/whatever TEC is.

Try to keep your forces able to assist your planet within several minutes - if it can't do this, a second fleet is in order. Remember, there is a difference between different types of fleets - You could build a fleet designed to delay the opponent as long as possible as the cavalry comes. Guardians, Destra Crusaders, Defense Vessels, Hangar Defenses, Repair Platforms, and others are good for Advent (I play primarily as Advent). For TEC, try Hoshiko Robotic Cruisers, Heavy Cruisers, Flak Frigates, Hangar Defenses, Repair platforms, etc. Micromanaging is crucial to make sure that your fleet will survive a while - keep your ships within the regeneration zone of your repair bays using hold position. For Guardians with Repel (I know, not TEC, but Guardians kick arse), move the enemy around like crazy. Skilled microers can keep an entire enemy fleet corralled and unable to attack orbital structures for minutes at a time with the Guardians' Repulsion ability. Combine this with spammed Fighters and Bombers, and they won't be doing so hot. Combine this with Phase Jump Inhibitors and keeping them inside your gravity well, and you could keep them occupied for at least a good ten minutes with just 10-15 Drone Carriers, a couple repair bays, and 6-7 guardians getting switched out.

All of this requires skill, and different races have different strategies. Develop your own.

Explore. Expand. Exploit. Exterminate.

-ScaldingHotSoup

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Thank you, yet more great advice

I finally won my first game against the medium. Although it took me 7 hours

It was going so well right up until the last quarter, and then he seemed to attack one of my defensive positions with a MILLION units. I couldn't believe it. I managed to take out two of his capitol ships, but he killed all my defenders and a second set of defenders that came to help too. It was only when my main attack force arrived that they managed to fend the attack off. At that point I basically had to rebuild and I'm not sure how, but whenever I came across him, he had soooo many units. And they were a type that took a while to kill. It got rough at the end... Against the easy, I was just cleaning up the left overs at the end, but against the medium he was so strong at the end, and so aggressive (he kept attacking any weak defenders with full force), it basically took me about 3 hours longer than it should have done.

I have learned so much though, mostly from this thread

Next time I'm going to get him in 5 hours

Thanks all.

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Be sure to keep churning out units from the beginning. If you ever need to stop making units to build structures, research, or upgrade planets, do so when you are at your fleet maximum. This is because when you increase your fleet cap, you get a permanent decrease in income for fleet upkeep. In other words, don't raise your fleet cap unless you need to, and never raise it until you are going to use it.

The same thing applies to research stations and the like. Unless a structure is going to immediately benefit you in some way, don't build it. Static defense (like hangar defenses and repair platforms) is excepted from this rule, but remember that it can't move, so if you can accomplish the same defenses with units, units are obviously the right choice. Remember, orbital defenses are for support - you will never beat back an enemy without a true fleet.

-ScaldingHotSoup

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