I have played quite a few games, and got comfortable on normal with an economy strategy & started playing tough. I think I lost 4 of my first 6 games pretty bad. It seemed like luck and I was continually pissed off by the AI who was tech trading like mad. I never had anything to trade, they were trading so much amongst themselves and to make matters worse, my economy strategy that played so well on normal wasn't holding up.
One day on the galciv2.com, I see a new post in the margins and decide to read it. It's
url=https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=253&AID=111272#858218. Look at Admiral ridgeheads' reply. He really details out directions for first 10-15 turns. I decide to give it a try.
Anyway, I decide to try a lot of things at once...my first metaverse game ... not a predefined one, just started "new game" and it was intense. Medium size, tough difficulty, default stars/planets/anomolies, 4 opponents and no trading allowed (I also wanted to see if that had an impact).
I was stuck in a corner & was going to just quit/restart 'cause I hate that but wanted to try out the instructions on the post above. Lo & Behold, I find 4 resources nearby that I'm able to claim so I decide to stick it out.
The bad thing was I only colonized 4 worlds, 3 of them in one star system & 2 in the other (my HW). Anyway, I was penned in and built up a horde of econ starbases and one military. I was cranking out as many constructors as possible to mine / defend all the resources I had nabbed. My research was lagging because of this focus.
Anyway, fairly early in the game, not one, not two, but all 4 races declared war on me within about 2-3 turns. I have no idea what I did to piss them off, but I had waves & waves of fleets coming at me. I put out about 10 fighters with "tiny" hull, with Min-balls II I think and a defelctor (all races had lasers on them).
So, I barely get these built when the first waves start coming in, and started to research up a few notches in MD, shields, minuturization and most importantly logistics (I was mining two research resources, my race had 40% research bonus).
To be honest, I thought I was dead. I mean, there must have been 100 ships headed my direction in about 3-4 turns (I had built the wonder "eyes" of the Universe - gives 15 parsecs visibility for all ships, so basically whole map is visible)
And all I have are these puny "tiny" hulls with one md & one shield...
But I had a military starbase projecting an additional +3 shield defenses and, an additional +1 to all hit points and +1 to my MD shots.
I couldn't believe it. The first wave comes in and I killed 4 fleets (4 ships each) in one turn with two of my 3-stack fleets, not losing a single ship.
Hmmmm I thought...naw my pessismistic side soon took over as all I could see were fleets headed in my direction. Troop transports, so many fleets I didn't even try to count. I started cranking out a slightly better ship, this time a small hull with 2xMass Drivers and one better deflector and my logistics was up to 16, so now I had fleets of 5 ships.
The thing was when these new ships joined my "tiny" ships, they were getting wasted and the tiny's were polishing off the AI fleets. But then I started looking at the HP of these tinys. What were once 11HP were now up to 30-35HP across the board. This is like a battleship!!
Every battle, one ship always gets hammered, but not destroyed. I would disband the fleet, take that ship & move it to the back lines to rest & replenish & add a freshly minted ship.
This goes on for what seems like forever. I mean waves & waves.
But in the background, I'm continuing to research like mad, getting more minuturization, more shields and finally the nano ripper! I start cranking out these and (i'm starting to learn now), opportunistly engage them with weaker fleets. The bad fleets are still be tackled by my mini's believe it or not (they're up to 40-50HP by this point...the medium hulled nano rippers are only 20HP?? fresh off production). As soon as I start building the nano's I switch research to planetary invasion, all the way to the advance troop module. This takes a while, but by this time, I've got about 20 nano-rippers who I've got the HP up in the mid-30's and while I'm starting to build the troop invasion fleet, I send my nano's out to my closest two enemies and start wiping the floor with them. I clean out every planet. oh once in a while, they get down to the teens in their HP from damage, but I peel them off and send them back for rest & recuperation.
Then it's just a matter of sending in 4000 troops at a time on about 6 nearby planets, taking them with ease. I keep a few fleets nearby other planets to keep the pesky troop transports at bay and also to destroy any ship that gets built the previous turn by the AI.
Then it was just a matter of time to build up population & wipe the floor. It took another couple hundred turns and I got a cultural victory (10 planets must have defected to me as I took over all their space & destroyed all the star bases.
The final score? I destroyed nearly 900 ships while losing only 100. The thing I still can't figure out is I had the 4th highest military score. Something's not right with the scoring system.
Anway, it was a game I didn't want to start, but got hooked on the resources, thought I'd lost on mulitple occasions, but that military starbase and the continual buildup of HP on my tiny hulled wonders just made me nearly invincible.
It's a strategy that I just learned and I think it has a lot of merit.
And to Admiral Bridgehead...THANK YOU!!!
I haven't figured out how someone else can play this game, but the stats for my metaverse account are url=http://metaverse.galciv2.com/index.aspx?g=player&id=5404
