Unless you are playing at the very highest difficulty, I assure the AI is not god. Unless you put up a replay I have no idea what you are doing wrong, but I would guess you are not expanding fast enough early on. This is indeed a strategy game, but there are many wrong strategies that may not be obvious to people used to other strategy games. Chief among them are building lots of capital ships and turtling early game. Anyways, I encourage you to either describe your strategy/tactics or upload a replay so we can see exactly what you are doing wrong.

Thanks for your replies. Here is one strategy I used to the best of my memory. upg. civ infra. Built a capital ship factory and q'd KOL with five fighters. Bought four scout ships and had them on auto explore. Built a further metal mine and purchased 100 crystal. Fully upg. KOL ship. 4 repair platforms and 4 gauss. Bought one Marzat and upg. and one colony ship. Researched shields and officer training. Expanded to one adjacent asteroid and killed the enemy and placed my KOL ship on it. Upg. the asteroid. Expanded to a volcanic planet and eventually killed the non-player enemy at huge expense of resources and ships. The enemy player then invaded my capital planet with forces quite at odds to the info revealed by the scouts because the conditions now present on my capital planet meant I had no other resources, devices or fighting forces to defeat them. As soon as I could build a gauss or a fighting frigate, the enemy player just poured in infinite forces. My Armani suit was totally dishevelled. I had to begin again. The AI set the rules and then goes on to break them. I am a chess player. I know the rules. I don't expect my opponent, if he is losing, to whack me with a knuckle duster and claim he has won the chess game. On another strategy, it may have been possible to defeat the enemy player when it invaded, but this would have blown me into the stone age, when I would in effect be starting the game again. It does get boring when no firm progress can be made according to the set rules. The balance is disproportionate in favour of the enemy AI. Whilst there may be no surefire strategy, it is important for fun to at least get a grip on the game and feel you are actually competing on a level playing field and progressing, and not have an atomic bomb dropped on you when you are still throwing hand grenades. I have played on the simplest scenario, no pirates, both players on tec with the enemy player on easy economy.

What you have done there is to cripple your own economy by spending your early income on defensive structures that won't be used for a long time, as well as leave your fleet dawdling at your home planet.  There are no RTS games that I am aware of where you could win like that.

You need to grab more resources earlier.  No player of any experience would do anything but build all the home metal and crystal extractors first, if they began on normal start.  Then you should capture all the extractors you can as cheaply as possible, which normally means any asteroid you can get your hands on.  One capital ship can defeat the forces at any asteroid as soon as it is built, and also the forces at any planet with only 6-8 militia ships.  It even gains experience from doing this. 

Extractors are most important for your early income, though your home infrastructure upgrade is also valuable.  You should ensure that you upgrade the infrasructure on captured planets and asteroids to the extent that you don't lose income, though.  Later you should build trade ports.  Even on easy economy, if the AI owns a dozen gravwells to your home, asteroid and volcanic, it will win.  You need to take more of the map earlier and get a bigger income of credits and resources.

Which of the forum guides have you been examining, so that we can see if they should be removed?  Can you link to them?  It doesn't seem that you've got a basic grasp of the game yet.  It is rather more fun than your experience of it so far.

read this thread.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/374670

 

There are also some replays of skilled players playing skillfully around on the web, watch them, and watch how suddenly unfair ai seem easy.

Did you buy Trinity and if so, are you playing the "Diplomacy" version of the game?  If so, then you should set Pirates to "false" (play with pirates off).  The pirates are severely overpowered in the Diplomacy expansion and they'll only frustrate you at this point.

Thanks again for your responses. I am playing the Trinity edition, but only the original Sins at the moment. No matter what I try, with all your recommendations, I am defeated. On the first game today in exactly half an hour and on the second in exactly one hour, the game decides to terminate the player. The next game will be two hours when the same scenario will occur. The two games I played were 1v1, no pirates, tec with the enemy player on either hard or easy economy. I expanded quickly onto a volcanic planet and two asteroids, all fully upgraded. At this point I was invaded by the enemy player from nowhere ( once on a map with no jump lines and once on a map with jump lines but no sign of them being used by the enemy player). No enemy player ship (Class Marauders, Class Evac., Karrastra, Skirmishers) was even destroyed and was five planets away from my Capital Planet originally. I poured Javelises and Cobalts into the battle, with lots of hangars and repair platforms, all to no effect. Against the enemy player no fully upgraded Capital Ship last more than a few seconds before it is destroyed. The same will happen if another one is built, in order to balance out the incoming resources. I only used one or at teh most two Capital Ships in any game. They are weak. Anyway, the game had decided at a specific time to end, and so it did. I may last two hours next time and three or four hours in the games after that, but it will end. It may decide, after playing it numerous times to offer a victory, but not based on any particular strategy. This is not a strategy game. If anyone thinks differently, then I would like to see their winning strategy on the small map.

Thanks for your suggestions. This is the first small map listed on single player Sins. It is still the case that, no matter what I try, the game will end at a certain time with the enemy player invading my planets with infinite forces without even one of their ships being destroyed in the process. I have just played it again and it ended punctually in two hours with the enemy player invading my planet, despite the fact I had two planets, my Capital Planet and a volcanic planet rolling in the resources, but this time allowed me to succeed in a small defeat before the two hours were up when the game ended with an en masse invasion of greatly superior forces. Even if I see the forces coming, there is no way I can prepare for the invasion, as the game has decided to end. If I play the game again and again, it will probably allow a victory eventually, not dependent on any strategy.

I recorded this today in a 1v1 TEC versus Vasari Unfair Economist in Vanilla (1.191). Let me know if you have issues watching it. Even though it has resource cheets, the AI invests in a lot of useless research and modules and does a poor job of colonizing. The AI also tends to get stymied if you have a choke point in that they tend not to attack if they think your fleet might beat theirs. In this case you either need to advance or perform a ruse by moving your fleet to an adjacent well. The AI is also not very smart as they could have destroyed my Akkan as it was fleeing but instead broke away to attack my LRM's. The AI lost after they fled the initial battle as it was limited to the four planets it had taken (The AI should have won the initial battle but it does a poor job prioritizing targets).

I let my Akkan continue to colonize the remaining neutral worlds while my main fleet pressed on the AI. It finally gave up when I decided to destroy it's capital ships on his home planet. I would say this is plenty of strategy with this game. Some require you to think ahead about where you want the initial conflict to be (which is impacted by random maps). Others, have to do with understanding counters and techs and when it makes sense to get them. In a small map like this I don't do a lot of research except for what I consider necessary technology and research to win the map.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5790092/Temp/AutoRecord-11241021.record

ok, you need to downloadthe file and put it in your replay directory. Then choose watch replay in your single player menu. If your not sure of the location open the options menu in sins then go to mods and click the show mod path. The directory containing the mod path will also have the replay folders.

An hour is a relatively long period of time, even in this game.  Generally speaking, an opponent that's been given that long to build up could have anything.  This is not a rush by any means, and a large conventional fleet by this point is typical.  You need to speed this up a bit more; I typically am capturing planets at a rate of one every 3 minutes in the early-game, which means I usually have around 6 planets within the first 15 minutes.  You don't need to move that fast to beat the normal AI, but it should give you an idea of the kinds of speeds that are possible.



Hard has a small resource cheat, easy has a small resource penalty.  Losing to hard is no big deal when you're beginning, but losing to easy indicates that you have a fundamental issue with your approach, and need to look at your speed and spending priorities.


You only need to buy the civilian population upgrades (and for ice/terran/desert planets, you only need two of them).  The other upgrades are "nice to have" but usually unnecessary, and buying them all is exorbitantly expensive.

This on its own would bankrupt you and cripple your early expansion.



You cannot "see" enemies on phase lanes without the appropriate research, and even then the warning you get is so short that the research isn't worth your time.  You need proactive intelligence so you see the incoming enemy fleet before they arrive.  I assure you they are not coming out of nowhere, and you can even watch the replay and see the enemy build up and attack.



Without knowing the number of units involved, I can't comment much, but from the sounds of things you were outnumbered significantly by heavy units.



Given the units you've described, massed Javelis would be your best response.  Skirmishers and capital ships in particular are no match for a large bulk of Javelis.  The AI didn't have Enforcers, Carriers, or Sentinels, so there's really no reason to use anything else.  A steady trickle of units won't do much, though.  You need to step back and regroup into a larger force, sacrificing planets if need be.  Preferably you'd want those units before he arrives.



The "on the dot" factor is probably a fluke.  I can tell you from experience that timing is NOT a forte of the AI.  When I do my speedruns (typically my opening attack is 10-20 minutes into the game) I have the AI down for the count long before the one-hour mark, and I prey on the AI's terrible timing to throw off its defenses and pin it down before it can establish itself.


As for replays, this is your path:
C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Record-Singleplayer

AppData is a hidden folder; you'll need to reveal it from folder options.

I've got an old replay I uploaded for someone else with similar issues as you: http://www.filefront.com/15978297/Comp%20Stomp%2003-30-10.record

This is unfair difficulty completely and utterly beaten in 70 minutes.  You'll notice that the serious fighting started around the 30-minute mark, and from that point onwards I was hitting hard on two fronts while bolstering my economic, tech, and fleet composition.  Towards the end I accidentally built too many Iconus Guardians; didn't have enough firepower and the final battle dragged on a little long as a result.

When watching a replay, either watch with the "All Visible" box checked off or watch from the viewpoint of the AI (click on the faction name above the speed setting until you're viewing as the AI). Otherwise all you see is what you would have seen yourself in-game.

Probably one of the clues that you are falling behind is the rankings visible to the right of the portrait window on the bottom of the screen (when nothing is selected). The top number denotes your position in the Empire Rankings (based on colonized planets, research completed, and % of galaxy culture), the middle your position in the Military Rankings (based on fleet supply used, number of tactical structures/Starbases/Mines, and the number and levels of active capital ships), the bottom being the Economy Rankings (based on credit, metal, and crystal income rates). Pay particular attention to the military rankings - if you rank as number 2 for fleet supply used, that is an indication that the AI player is most likely currently fielding a larger fleet than you are. Hover over each number to see the rankings for each sub-category. Other indications could be the Economy Rankings - if you know the AI has a larger total population and extractors and you somehow are ranked 1st in Economy, that is a strong indication the AI has invested in increasing its fleet supply (which results in a larger upkeep percentage, but permits for a larger fleet).

Thanks again. InfiniteVoid: noted what you said and will play again with this mind I hope this evening.

DesConnor: Reporting for duty Sir. Your quite right about Dragon Age Origins, though tactics are important and resources. Other RTS games I have played would be Homeworld, Heroes of War, Supreme Commander etc. Have just played my eighth game and, yes, the Armageddon arrived at exactly twice the time the previous game had taken and, yes, this time I was allowed to defeat the enemy player four times, when previously it was three, then two and then once, as it is programmed to. This was the easiest game to play as it becomes incrementally easier to play each time, even with the same strategy. My strategy (very roughly) in the early game is to expand quickly on reduced research maintaining only one, sometimes two, capital ships which I use to invade non-enemy player planets. On the choke points at the phase lines, I put mines, Javelises together with repair platforms and situate the rest close to the centre of the planet. I usually fully upgrade a planet where this has a direct threat from the enemy player, but not planets which have to be reached via my other planets. I usually make one, later sometimes two, upgrades on officer training and fleet capacity. I usually buy metal or crystal if I am short. Once the Aramageddon arrives I know there is nothing I can do about it, because the enemy is infinitely producings forces and in many cases none of their ships are even being harmed, still less destroyed. They are popping up from nowhere. You say not to put scouts on autoexplore, something I learned in the third game, though the first advice I had from this site was to do exactly that in the early game, to reveal the map presumably. Before I invade a planet, I usually send a scout to reveal what the current situation is. This is not usually any help against the enemy player, as it usually fights with forces far in excess than what has been revealed. After I had defeated the enemy player once on my planet and sent a scout, it still had the same number of forces on the invading planet. Something happened in this game I have not seen before. My capital ship when fighting actually returned to my capital planet where there were repair platforms, even though I had not instructed it to do this. It was a sensible move and helpful for a short time. I have seen this in other RTS games where, no matter what instructions have been given, the forces take on a life of their own. All present and correct. 

Well, if you are using mines, it is not more a vanilla sins game like you have wrote... mines is a entrenchment features...

Now, about strategy, there is several ways to win... you need to find your own tactic who is compatible with your play style...

In my own case, i am more a research/economy guy... maybe having only 4-5 planet forming a line ( cluster are bad for trade )... with only 1 capital ship but being number one in research/economy... somebody attack, i can produce a bunch of ship everywhere for defend... some research allow to have a bigger firing range... in case of encounter between two similar ship where yours have a bigger firing range can allow you to kill the other without being it...

You play TEC and build to much repair platform... my personal opinion is that the main weapons for the TEC, after the strong economic is the Hosiko... work like a repair platform but it is mobile... one repair platform surrounded by orbital structure seem great but can repair only one object at the time... a few hosiko with your fleet can make wonder...

Sins is a very complicate game with a complex learning curve... same today, after 3 years play, i discover new things ( mainly by digging in the entity code )...

In very little map, don't loose time for build mines, for make non needed research... remember that the best defense is a good offense... use the first 30 minutes for build your economy and make some critical research... build a fleet and attack the enemy... keep the battle on his ground... a good idea is to destroy his research lab if you don't plan to directly invade the enemy planet, once lab are destroy, the upgrade researched by the enemy become non active... easy way to send a enemy to the stone age... if the enemy have a long line of planet, it create a huge income bonus... attack a planet in the middle of the line... never upgrade fleet point to fast, it kill your economy too...

There is 1000's of tip and trick... some will work with your play style, some will not... one of a other map can request different strategy...

About the pirate, i keep them on... i have never a big fleet, have only good research and strong economy... so, i use the pirate for attack my enemy ( and friend too ) ...

Buy metal or crystal is really a bad idea... to much expensive... colonize resource asteroid find in neutral gravity wheel... that your scout have discover... since you are playing entrenchment, build a starbase with the trade upgrade in some of these gravity wheel without planet for extend you trade line...

Well, i can go on for several page... point is this game is great and you need a lot of time for master it... other have advice you to use reply... if allow you to see everything who have happen from each side and see your mistake... before looking at reply from other, take a look at your own reply...

I have followed some of your esteemed members (high karma) detailed advice, but all failed.

By the way, high karma don't mean that somebody is a good player... by example, the majority of my karma is related to 3D modeling topic or computer related topic.... i have 100's of playing hours but mainly with mod ( who fully change the gameplay )... maybe tomorrow, there will be somebody with 0 karma who will post a reply who past perfectly wit your own style of play...