Best strats for winning 1v1's on Random - Small (MP)

Oh boy. It's a hard answer to give man. Be wary of massing scouts, cause unfortunately upgraded Illums, once toughened up, will tear through scouts.

1 v 1 strategies are different than 3v3 or FFA obviously. Since ur playing random 1 v 1 I'm assuming, then you're likely never going to see your opponent for 30 minitues or so. That makes civ build acceptable.

Civ build is an investment that needs time to pay for itself. What I do is do my best to do two things.

1. Get new planets and upgrade them into the green as TEC or Vasari, all the way for pop if Advent

2. Get a fleet, I used a mix of mostly scouts and some light frigs until I can get lrf's. Seems to be the ideal early game spreading fleet

If you want my point of view. I do point 1 and point 2 constantly. Once I hit the pop cap for whatever level I'm at, I go back in and get pertinent upgrades, like tier one military upgrades and tier 1 econ upgrades. Tier two maybe, depends on race

I'm always scouting my opponent to see what he's making. That dictates what you should make. Make the counter.

It's incredibly hard to put one's strategy in a nutshell, but I do my best to never let my 1 frigate factory stop making frigates. It's critical to never stop and only stop to get necessary planet upgrades. That's how you win in this game. Getting an econ is fun, but you need a fleet to win. Always.

Give me more case and point example like "should I make scouts when...." They're easier to answer.

There is no set strategy. It is a combination of what both you and your opponent do that determines the game.

1.) Scout the map, figure out how far away your enemy is and make sure he is not an immediate threat. If he is a threat, you have to build military sooner.

2.) Expand and maybe even work on Trade if you see there is no risk of contact. Keep an eye on your enemies fleet movements.

3.) Try and grab key worlds ASAP! If you see a world that bottlenecks your domain, or if a world gives a lot of strategic options by being a crossroads, try and grab it. It is often better to hold one of these worlds than to grab a planet in a little cul-de-sac that you can take later.

4.) If you see there is not a risk of immediate warfare, try to jump to a more advanced ship type and make those. Some games the players are so removed that you can go straight to HC's and support cruisers. Others, there is a "highway" of easy to cross gravwells that make the threat of a surprise attack a reality.

5.) If you build military instead of econ, use it. If it sits around doing nothing, it is giving you no return on your investment.

6.) If you build econ instead of military, keep an eye on the size of your enemies fleet and what he is doing. If he shows up with 50 cobalts and you haven't started building your military yet, he will blow up your technologically advanced trade infrastructure.

7.) Know what ships counter which other ships. There are tons of discussions on this in the forums, but a smaller force of the right kind of ship can fight twice its number of favorable targets. If you have been scouting, you know what the other guy has, and what you need to build.



Well, those are my secrets! I will probably have a hard time winning now that everyone knows 'em.

Always keep an eye on the diplomacy

Look at the military , econimic and empire statistics to see if your rank 1 or 2.

This can give you vital information.

I also like small maps for the reasons you listed. Unfortunately, I don't think the random small is really viable for competitive MP. It's often imbalanced by one player having an easier path to desirable planets, and sometimes you get something really ridiculous like one side bottlenecked behind the pirate system while the other has free reign over the rest of the galaxy (I've actually seen this happen several times).

I thought econ upgrades are best to get early, military upgrades late, since their effects are felt over time (for econ upgrades) or immediately (for military). Like, given that TEC's tier 1 terran world upgrade only raises my homeworld's population, wouldn't I want to get that sooner so the population has time to increase (and pay taxes)?

By the same token, i can understand putting off military upgrades since they don't much for their cost unless you have many ships that it can apply to. Not only that, but they technically only "work" when you're fleet is in battle.

Soooooo, to ask you a case in point question: Exactly when is the best time to get econ/milit upgrades? Which ones are more important that others?

Econ upgrades are best to get early, unless of course someone decides to kill you before they have a chance to pay off. Any econ investment is advantageous if you have time for it to pay for itself.

1 v 1 maps really aren't all that challenging. Intiially I send out scouts, no more then three (do the crystal thing etc.). Then build the cap factory. For Tec I always use the Kol. I go with 2 military stations first in order to secure the Jav. proto for Tec. Take about two planets and a couple of asteroids. This should give you enough income to build a fleet of Javs, or what have you, with your cap ship as the flagship. This is a fairly easy way to win. Of course with this fleet you go straight for the home world on smaller maps. Leave the other colonies for last. Attacking the homeworld will draw in the enemy fleet. After you decimate it you pretty much have a guranteed victory.

Oh yeah make pirates your friend!

Ideally you want your first pop upgrade to finish exactly as your home world hits max population. The first two levels of pop upgrade are extremely good deals in terms of economic return. I would only skip them if one side or the other is going for an all-in rush.

One thing I haven't got a great handle on is the right moment to get military upgrades. For example, the TEC upgrades to LRM weapons increase damage by 5%. That means that, for them to be more efficient than simply building more LRMs, you need more than 20 in your fleet (if you have less than 20, each additional LRM, which is actually slightly cheaper than the upgrade, would produce more than a 5% increase in firepower). There are other factors though. By getting the upgrades earlier you can delay the Fleet Logistics upgrade, which lets you get a little more money. Or sometimes you are already constantly pumping units out of your Frigate Factory and still have extra money for the upgrade.

Are shield/hull upgrades worth it at all? I don't know.

At the start of the game, I usually bypass planets with just the Mother and colonize asteroids towards the enemy, until I have my LRMs up and running. This has 2 advantages:

1. I don't have to build civic labs, just military.

2. I get close the the enemy a lot quicker.

When i get the chance, I'll build the civic labs and a colonizer frigate with a second fleet of LRMs and colonize the planets.

This is why this game needs to develop a custom map culture--so that people can play balanced if not symmetrical maps.

Just a newbie and starting with small maps, 1v1, but consistently getting over run by pirates. Whenever I seem to have them wiped out, fleets keep appearing that are significantly larger than previous fleet. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I'm fairly new also but I believe I can answer this one. The more reward out on you, the more Pirate Ships will be sent to collect it. So bear this in mind if and when you are in a bidding war with rivals. It is actually often better to let the Pirates come so that your Capital ship(s) can gain easy experience so don't go bidding huge amounts.

Good luck.

Wait, I thought going for Kol first was a sure way of ruining your econ? How quickly are you able to capture planets/roids with a colony frigate?