stalemate with hard ai's

from Sins Forums

ok here is the situation...
i dont know if i really need help or tips, or just some encouragement

large single star map. 2 hard ai, 2 med, 3 low, and me as TEC.

i am ranked as 1 in most areas. 2 in a couple, and 3rd in fleet.  mainly becaues my fleets are constantly committed and dying.

i have about 50% of all my techs researched.  i am slowly replacing light frigs with heavy cruisers.  idk how many caps at this point.  but there is 1 carrier, 1 akain or w/e and 1 dunov.  the rest 5/6 are kols.  these are spread across the fleets.  i have two allies under peace treaty.  they pretty much love me at the moment.

i have 3 main fleet bodies fighting on two fronts.  the smallest is the reserve fleet protecting half of my empire.  the other fleet on that side finally found the home world of an ai (orange) that has been slugging it out for about an hour.  at his home world, i out cap him in space and i wiped out two of his other planets on the way so i will win this one in time.  the bad news is that my reinforcements are back in my space where they need to stay and watch another enemy ai that is easiest 3x their strength.  worst of all.  i beleive the two ai's on this front are allied.  so i am expecting the huge purple blob to roll into either one of my planets or show up at the home world i am attacking.

now to the other front.  here i have a single fleet.  under powered.  with lowever level caps.  i have been fighting red there for some time which is a hard ai.  red is getting predictable however.  he started jumping between two of my planets on the front.  thankfully, i am allied with pink which has the bulk of his fleet in the area helping me defend.  i have finally built the phase space jammer thing on one of the two planets.  red attacked and lost about 1/3 of his fleet.  this side of the war is in a very delicate balance.  without the friendly ai i would loose my front line planets and fleets.  if i loose one of those planets i loose a chunk of income and the rear planets are not fully defended yet.

the only thing i can think of at this point is to go on the offensive.  i need to strike out and take a couple of red planets or wipeout another ai before my alliance with pink starts to fail.  if i could find the red home world then i would send pink on an attack mission to strike it.  that would hopefully draw the red fleets away long enough for me to rebuild my fleet and finish off orange on the other front.

i have the most planets.  i have the most income potential.  i just need to keep my ships and planets alive long enough for industry to catch up with economy.

strategy
2,739 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Hi!
Fighting AIs should be easy, as they usually don't bypass your frontline planets to strike in your "soft belly". Reinforce your frontline planet(s) with lots of tactical structures. For such a planet I suggest you to use 1 phase disruptor, 3-5 repair stations, the rest a mix of cannons (put them in a tight line between your planet and a phase line where AI will send ships in, so they'll be able to "support" each other) and hangars with a mix of fighters and bombers (depending on what AIs are using). Such a combo will hold a while even against a big fleet, giving you more time to respond with your fleet.

You can also try "baiting" an AI with deliberately weaker defense (less guns and hangars) on one planet. When AI jumps in, you bring your big fleet and smash the intruding fleet that can't retreat quickly because of your phase disruptor. Rinse, repeat. ;)

And lastly: use Novaliths. They'll not destroy fleets, but they'll kill their money income, so you'll be able to win by attrition.

BR, Iztok
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
i finally won. many many hours later. my computer was crawling while dealing with the battle calculations and ship movements.

red ended up as my closest ally. pink was my biggest enemy. i killed off orange and and every other ai except green which red killed off early on.

basically the war continued to stall until i managed to build up a reserve fleet of lrms. i added a couple of repair and carrier crusiers to the mix. when pink attacked with a small fleet i brought this group (70+ ships) and wiped him out. this was the beginning of the end.

after that i found the majority of my caps were in a single group. as he attacked with 3 or 4 caps, my group of 12 or 13 would focus on the caps and kill them. during that spanse, i lost maybe 3 caps. he lost 10. all above lvl 8.

i then started hit and run attacks to weaken his infrastructure. meanwhile i was completing the novalith research. i weakened 5 worlds in two parts of the map with my hit and run attacks. it was costing the computer thousands in resources to rebuild the planets. mean while i slowly built up fleet and defenses along the line.

in the last few hours of the game, i had build 3 cannons. i would target 2 on large planets in his rear area, and use 1 against my target planet. move my fleet in. take out phase stablizers and defenses. then hit the planet. the cannon shell would hit and either kill the planet or weaken enough for my 13 caps to finish it off in seconds.

i repeated this process over and over until pinks back was finally broken. he still maintained the largest fleet up until the final hour of the game. but thanks to well placed tactical structures i was able to hold out long enough for my main fleet to wipe out pinks income.

i will probably not play that type of game again. i took forever to break the stalemate and my computer hated processing pink's fleet movements.
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Easy thing to do is set a string of bate planets along a breach line. Make the last planet of the breach line the most heavily defended. The AI will slowly make its way toward the breach. Meanwhile send a fleet to his homeworld with the ability to wipe it out. His attacking fleet will leave for the homeworld because of your attack. Work your way back through his empire wiping out planets along the way until his fleet arrives. Return back to your front line with your maurading fleet and replace any lost ships. Work your back down the other side of his empire until you reach the AI's new "home planet".. repeat and watch defeat. If you defeat an enemy they will most likely just stay at one planet with the remainder of their fleet, leaving you free to target the remainder of AI's.