ShuShu62

Join Date 06/2003

The Evolution of fleet composition

In the beginning there were the Dread Lords, and their ships were good, too Good.

They had ships that higly outclassed anything I could build. The counter was slow small ships in fleets that had weaponry that made the Dread Lord defenses have reduced efficiency. Each round the dread lords took a ship, and I took a bite. I would get the last bite

When I started playing against the AI players, they started with slow small ships. The counter was to build big hulled ships with just enough offense to down their small hulled ships at the rate of one per round. My ships cost twice as much as theirs, but had 3 times the speed and 4 times the hitpoints. I would bypass the fleets and hit home planets.

The AI countered by all declaring war at once so I didn't have time to heal my ships.between wars. My counter was to fill the left over hull space with defense. The ships were 3-4 times as expensive but could now fight 10 times more rounds before dying.

The AI countered by building bigger ships. I countered by tailoring my few ships to beat their entire fleet. They had no shields for my weapons and my shields countered their weapons.

The AI countered by tailoring its ships to my ships and parking them on planets without orbital defenses so that the optimal ship would always defend. I countered by diversifying my ship payloads and defenses.

The AI countered with small ships that could overwhelm the watered down defenses. and so the world turns.

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It is extremely well balanced. The only reason folks feel there is a strategy that always works is that the AI is slow to react, and thus all of the above strategies work as long as you pick your fights to match your strategy. Interestingly, by amping up the AI's production capacity at Suicidal, I am actually reducing the AI's ability to react because it builds out its fleet to its spending limit, long before it knows the actual ships I am going to build. This is the Dread Lords true achilles heal. It is also why you must win wars quickly. If you fight a war of attrition, the AI is very adept at building well tailored new ships that replace the dead ones.

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Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

As you say there is an ebb and flow, action and reaction to the type of ships built by the AI and the changes made by the human to counteract them.

I've found that the most difficult thing to counteract is a strategy that uses a mixture of weapons types on different ships with an even distribution of all defense types on each ship. This usually makes me respond with an even distribution of defense on my ships as well. This means that I can’t devote a whole lot of hull space to overwhelming weapons, so I pick the one category of weapon that my opponent seems to have the least defense for. After I build enough of this kind of ship the AI responds and will update his fleet over time to defense in only the category of my weapon and an overwhelming offense in one category. Once he does this I have him. With the amounts of money I usually generate in my games (500K per turn is typical) I can upgrade all of my ships in a single turn to ones with strong defense in only the category of my opponents predominate weapon and change my weapon to one of the other top line weapons. It usually costs 3000 to 4000 bc per ship to upgrade but I can upgrade 100 or so ships out of petty cash. You’re right in that I must start and finish the war quickly, but I can pretty much do a dramatic ship upgrade every turn if I had to. No AI can keep up with this rapid a change in weaponry. At least not so far they haven't been able to.

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Just out of curiosity - how can you get 500K bc per turn? I imagine you're playing on a gigantic map, but how do you build out your planets? What population do you bring them to? I usually play on medium maps (I find the AI is much better at that size, plus it's a little more fast pace, especially when you have 7-9 opponents) at masochistic and I'm lucky if I'm even breaking even by the end of the game.

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Just out of curiosity - how can you get 500K bc per turn?

He is "sneaky sneaky" with his economic starbases.

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Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

He is "sneaky sneaky" with his economic starbases

In a roundabout way this is correct. Economic starbases don't actually generate more income (except for trade which I don't bother with). Economic starbases can significantly (16 give you 384%) boost the military and research production of the planets in their influence area. I use these a *lot*. I get more research and production out of 10 to 20 planets than most people get out of 200.

With all my research and production needs satisfied by only a few of my planets, every tile of all of my other planets are focused on income only. I'll ignore a precusor mine with a 700% manufacturing bonus on an income planet and put a stock exchange on it. Even without an economic event I'll get 1000 to 1500 bc's per income planet (this is in v1.31, in v1.4 this will probably go down). With the economic event I've gotten close to 5000 bc per turn on a single planet (a PQ32 with econ capital).

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

If I recall rightly, in another thread Mumblefratz said that econ bases help him spend money, not earn it. I think his revenue is from building a *vast* number of colonies (over 300?) and packing most of them with numerous Stock Markets. And I imagine he always has at least a couple of econ mines, probably more.

I don't recall him mentioning a target pop, but that's a wee bit of a moving target anyhow with the ongoing tweaks to the morale and agriculture buildings.

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Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

I should probably stop mentioning it because it does tend to hijack the thread away from the intended topic and this one is of interest to me, but it's hard to ignore because it does enable certain tactics that are otherwise difficult to implement.

But, to answer your implied question, the planets that have close to 400% production and research bonus are costly to support, but remember that bonus production only costs 50% of regular production. That means my 20 planets give me the production of 200 planets but the cost of only 100 planets. In the end that saves a *lot* of money, and of course this allows the specialization of 90% of my planets into income only. Currently, my normal income planet pop is 19B and since it's still v.31, I don't need any morale buildings.

Now could we get back to fleet composition (sorry ShuShu).

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I find that the AI during peace time seems to build their fleets with defenses geared to take on the strongest, not the ones they have the most animosity towards.
In my current game the Iconians and Drath hate each other(Drath had the evil event). They both use missiles, yet they both have defense for beam, which is of course what I'm using. They are both on friendly terms toward me though. They just went to war, so they'll be duking it out with missiles and beam defenses. I waiting to see if they react by building the defense for their current enemy during the war or if they're going to stay in fear of my Doom Rays.

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Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

I did find that there was a definite improvement in the AI's selection of weapons and defenses in v1.31. This was along with an overall improvement of other aspects of the AI's war strategy.

In v1.2 I could often go through 2 or 3 opponents without redesigning my ships. Now I find, if the war goes on any reasonable length of time, I need to redesign my ships during the war. It's been a definite improvement.

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The AI countered by tailoring its ships to my ships and parking them on planets without orbital defenses so that the optimal ship would always defend. I countered by diversifying my ship payloads and defenses.

I've found that the most difficult thing to counteract is a strategy that uses a mixture of weapons types on different ships with an even distribution of all defense types on each ship.

They are almost equivalent. As you say, to beat that defense you just need to pick one defense and overwhelm it.

I definitely had a 'You sneaky bugger, how do I beat that' moment after I lost a couple fleets to the paired Killer defense.

Of course, SrGalen pointed out in the other thread that the best counter to the paired Killer defense is to send in one killer for each of the AI's killers accompanied by 2 sacrificial lamb ships. Although I think that actually counts as a cheat, because it is taking advantage of the fact that the AI is bound to its algorythm and we know its algorythm, it is powerful knowledge.

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Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

the AI is bound to its algorythm and we know its algorythm, it is powerful knowledge.

Indeed.

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