Defensive military strategy?

Hi!

What's the best way to defend your civ when a more powerful civ attacks you?

• As first you should prevent that to happen. I usually send a trade freighter to all strong civs to improve relations with them, and try to get quite high diplomacy, again with the same purpose. I even give some money if relations with the most dangerous neighbour(s) are really low and war seems inevitable.
  
• Killing strong fleets can be problematic, if you don't have proper attack and defenses on your ships. So go for the weapon type they don't have defenses for, and defense type that match their weapons. Through whole game check regularly what ships they're building to get a clue.
  
• Also don't forget to move your heavily damaged ships out of fleets and to "repair" them on your planets to avoid losing them in prolonged wars. Since repair is for free, this keeps costs of wars low.
  
• The tactic you mentioned is good. I'd just expand it a bit by taking their planets. The goal is to weaken their economy, and to "force" their attacking ships to fall back to recapture their lost planets. As you probably will not be able to keep those taken planets, use mass drivers to take them to inflict as much damage as possible, and abandon that planet just before the loss of it seems inevitable. Even it they recolonize, the planet will be empty, and with much lower class that before your attack, and they'll need lots of money and time to rebuild it. The money, that would be used for ships otherwise.
  
  BR, Iztok

The way to buy yourself time for whatever you need when attacked... Take a small hulled ship and arm it with 1 (one) of your best weapon that they have no defense for... Then start having all endangered planets start pumping them out. And whatever you do, don't build structures that allow you to create fleets in orbit until you can crush them. Lots of small ships with decent attack and no armor can hold off the dreadnaughts until you are ready to go on the offensive. This worked well up to v1.1 and now works insanely well since v1.2 This will buy you plenty of time as long as you have a little cash in reserve

Military Starbases work great.

Also researching soldiering techs helps too and farms.. see where I'm going Often there isn't time for this to be effective

My strategy when in a tough spot, is loads of tiny size ships fleeted together with a military starbase in support. I have had enemy races declare war on me because I am 'weak', supposedly, then attack with wave after wave of superior ships. In the military starbases sphere of influence, my fleets of tiny ships blast them to bits, taking few losses, which are anyway easily replaced. Two things result from this usually:- 1) My attackers military rating goes down so much that he is then picked on by other stronger races, ha ha, I take a slice of his empire too. I have even inflicted such huge losses that the race attacking me has given up and surrendered!   2) My tiny ships gain considerable xp, thus hps, eventually allowing them to take the fight to enemy worlds.

Also researching soldiering techs helps too and farms

Soldiering is crucial, the Tir-Quan and Aphrodisiac are the two most powerful wonders, those in combination plus choose war party, 70% population growth, rest of starting ability points in soldiering mean your military invincible. U are unlikely to ever lose a planet in the game yr playing.

One of the reasons I'm asking this question is that in my last game, I tried using starbases and tiny fighters for defense, and it failed miserably. Some of my full-strenght fleets lost to theirs, and the fleets that won took heavy losses.

I think the change to combat in 1.2 made this strategy weaker because these fleets of tinies are very offense-heavy, and really benefitted from first strike. The starbases are really expensive to upgrade unless you're evil, and researching those techs isn't cheap either. Although, I didn't really commit to this strategy; I researched other things and built "normal" ships too. All you really need is high logistics, the starbase mobilization techs, and the most basic weapons.

Keep your ships away from your planets. If they are faster, they can lead the enemy ships in circles, if they are stupid enough to continue chasing. Some consider this an exploit. I consider it, idiotic AI. Focus your fleets on picking off enemy transports. A huge enemy fleet can do nothing to your planet without transports. Park one or more fast transports in back of your planets. Take the planet back the same turn they are taken. This is close to another exploit, because the idiot AI doesn't garrison the planet the same turn it is taken. If you have enough ships for an attack fleet, go forth. Take one of their planets, use mass drivers if necessary. You can offer this for a peace treaty and often the enemy will accept. / this new html editor is about as idiotic as the AI is at times.../

I'm telling you, the Orbital Fleet Manager works if you really want to be defensive I had an OFM and like 5 Defenders (with particle beam). They wiped out a Drengin attack with 10 small-sized ships.

trade with a third race for the appropriate weapon/defence type. it's better to have weaker weapons from a branch the enemy can't defend against. If the enemy is significantly more powerful than you it'll take sacrifices to beat them. Even if you have to give up expensive techs and lots of cash it's worth it to equip your ships more effectively. The real problem is that if the enemy has gotten into this position they are likely to be out producing you in all three catagories. It's a long road back once that happens. Hope they end up fighting multiple opponents and consider reducing social spending until you have a more impressive fleet.

Soldiering is crucial, the Tir-Quan and Aphrodisiac are the two most powerful wonders, those in combination plus choose war party, 70% population growth, rest of starting ability points in soldiering mean your military invincible. U are unlikely to ever lose a planet in the game yr playing.

I just tried this out and I managed to play on Tough and win without ever making a ship! It was quite amazing! I played Terran Alliance, War Party, Abilities: 10% Planet Quality; 70% Population Growth; Moral Bonus.

I start the game and build 6 factories on my home world, a farm and the rest market centres. Then I put tax rate on 49% and production rate to 100%. I set my survey ship to auto-survey and send my colony ship to Mars. On Mars I build 3 market centres.

Still on the first turn, I set research to 100% then research in this order, Xeno Research, Stellar Cartography, New Propulsion Techniques, Ion Drive then Impulse Drive. This takes about 8 weeks, in which time I buy about 4 factories on my home world.

Then when Impulse Drive is finished and set research to 0% and military to 100%. I go to the shipyard and create a quick colony ship with a basic support module for range. Then I buy one immediately. But with military production on 100% the ship only takes 2 weeks, if longer I buy more factories. Then I colonise lots of worlds using the mini map to direct my ships.

The colony rush is over and I set production to 50% social and 50% research where it pretty much stays for the rest of the game. First I research basic factory for manufacturing centre. Second I research up to Advanced hulls for - Hull plating, then I research up to Enhanced miniaturisation for - Micro repair bots. Then I research the Yellow branch and get Ethics first - Neutral, then Trade - for Economic Capital, then the first government type, for the vote!

Next I research up to Enhanced factory, and then I research the economics branch up to stock exchanges. Interspersed in this system I make my way up the research centres branch and so that I get a new building when my research planets finish production. Then I research up to level 2 farms, and habitat improvement and build Aphrodisiac. Then I research some Soldiering techs and build the TriQuan training facility. Also it's very important to research the diplomacy techs andbuild the galactic wonder to make others like you because I don't use trade!

By this stage you're pretty much invincible but someone will attack you, or may have already done so. So now you create and ally... say the Arceans and give them all your techs and they pulverise the enemy for you . Game over, takes about an hour.

one of the best things to do is to get that medium hull fast. research armor tech and Point Defense tech as quickly as you can. then go for either beam weapons or my favorite the mass driver based Shredder. Boost up your logistics to the maximum. Don't even bother with the frieghter tech the other civs will come to you. Now will all that done and over with you can now start getting the larger hulls. put out some beams ships and get that huge hull researched fast. Practically every time I have done challenging or tough I'm noticing that they build their ships with just 1 type of weapon system and little to no defenses. Keep in mind the AI is looking at what you have. so put out weak ships for it to see. get close to their ships so see what they have and research counter measures for that. on a huge hull ship with 10 armor spots used the mass drivers in the beggining are not much good against you. put in a couple of nano rippers or shredders and that one ship will take out fleets. early on. If you see that they have adapted then change up weapon systems for what they are not defending against. One cool "PURELY EVIL" trick is to take a Huge hull ship and make it look like a frieghter with the cargo module. send these out to the other civs areas even 2 or three of them at a time and build up a force of ships that have no weapons. The AI will ignore them. Now send out a huge ship with 5 of the advanced troop modules toward an entire system. put your best ship with each one ( or use a colony ship and convert it to troop transport right over their planets.. ) When the time is right convert those cargo ships to heavy weapon platform ships blast out the starbases wipe out the orbital stations and await the transports to come in. The other AI's don't even bother to stop this tactic when you move on to the next civ. Works like a charm every time. also make sure you take luck and creativity. Make one planet at least nothing but a starbase and factories and another just research a good 15pq planet is excellent for this and generally can be found as a minor race. If your attacking a planet that has a full starport make sure you have to attack waves going on it minimum it will wittle it down fast and then you have an easy pickings planet for takeover. Rinse and repeat..

Really odd I put in spaces and paragraphs in that message and it still all runs together...

I just tried this out and I managed to play on Tough and win without ever making a ship! It was quite amazing! I played Terran Alliance, War Party, Abilities: 10% Planet Quality; 70% Population Growth; Moral Bonus.

Well done, fun playing strategy eh...

U r invincible when it comes to planetary conquest (attacking and defending), plus the huge population growth means u never have that money hump at the start of the game and later on have money coming out of your ears. Which ever type they may be.  

Enemy races exhaust there population bases trying to invade u, thus destroying there own economy. Its a guarented win even on suicidal level and 1.2 changes do not even effect this strategy. 

U r invincible when it comes to planetary conquest (attacking and defending), plus the huge population growth means u never have that money hump at the start of the game and later on have money coming out of your ears. Which ever type they may be. Enemy races exhaust there population bases trying to invade u, thus destroying there own economy. Its a guarented win even on suicidal level and 1.2 changes do not even effect this strategy.

Interesting. I considered this strategy but didn't bother trying because I didn't see how it could possibly work given how much advantage the attacker gets. I didn't take into account just how useless the AI is at managing its populations!

Basically, the ideal is to have equal populations on all your planets (money producing planets aside, if you have them). This maximizes tax income and, usually, increases population growth. The AI tends to drain individual planets when colonizing or invading too far, which is the first mistake, but more importantly it doesn't make any effort to replenish the population from other planets after it's done this.

Even leaving this aside, the AI needs to stop making invasion attempts that have *no* chance of success just because it sees an undefended planet. Instead of building and throwing 10 1B troop ships at a highly populated planet one after the other, it should build some ships with 4 or 5B capacity, wait 'til *all* 10B troops are ready and THEN attack. Population growth ability or no, you couldn't hope to successfully fight those off on every planet (OK, maybe it'd need 20B for some planets, but the principle still applies).

In answer to the original post, I can't say I've tried this (because I haven't yet had to) but now first attacker advantage has gone, isn't there a strong case for building orbital fleet managers and using ships in orbit? The reason being, ships in orbit don't need engines, so you can pack on more weapons and defences, and they also get further weapons and defence bonuses. These two things mean you should be able to turn out ships for defensive purposes which are the equivalent of attacking forces from several steps further down the tech tree.

Another option (I think this has already been mentioned), military starbases combined with tiny ships with just a single weapon and defence is very potent. This used to be a great cheap way to make your worlds impregnable until fairly late in the game, though I don't know how effective it is now you get charged for the ship assist modules.

Otherwise, use careful fleet management. Try to manage things so you end up with some very experienced ships. For example, say you have 10 experienced ships and 10 less experienced and can fit 10 into a fleet and you have an enemy fleet in the area to take on.

Scenario 1) You expect to lose one fleet entirely then a few from the 2nd fleet. Send in the inexperienced guys first then the experienced.

Scenario 2) You expect to lose 3 or 4 ships. Rearrange the fleets so that you have one with 6 experienced ships and 4 inexperienced then attack with that.

Since it's in your space, take advantage of the fact your ships repair much faster than theirs. Don't send a crippled ship into battle if a reinforcement is nearby. Instead bring in the reinforcement and send the damaged ship off to a planet to repair.

In addition to all of the above tips...

Any time a war goes badly for me and I start losing too many planets, the only thing that pulls it back is to launch a major counteroffensive, regardless of how hopeless it looks.

The very first thing to do is to look around for any military and economic resources being mined by the enemy. Destroy them at all costs and keep destroying them if they try to rebuild them. That right there usually cripples them.

Military spending to 70% minimum. Build another farm on the economic capital and ignore its morale. Every planet set to build fast troop transports (except economic capital, if it can be helped). Then start invading every enemy planet within range.

Only build whatever warships are necessary to protect your planets and to clear the defenses of enemy planets. If you're losing that badly, chances are you can't match them ship for ship anyway.

Don't leave the troops on a captured colony. Build another transport and launch it as soon as you can fill it. The idea isn't to take planets for yourself; it's to take them away from the enemy. If they recapture a planet, reinvade it as quickly as possible.

The exception is for planets with special projects or certain trade goods. If it's something that's going to help your war, defend the planet.

Very high population enemy planets probably have equally low morale. "Information Warfare" generally works better than "Mini Soldiers" on these planets.

The high priority targets are any planets with these projects on them and in this order:

Tir Quan
Aphrodisiac
Hyperion Logistics
Economic capital
Manufacturing capital
Tech capital
Enemy home world
Other former home worlds captured by the enemy
Very high population planets

Do whatever it takes to capture these particular planets. If these projects are already on your planets, do whatever is necessary to protect them. Recapture them as quickly as possible, if they are taken from you.

This has pulled my ass out of the fire more than once. It ruins the economy, but it ruins their econmy worse. If nothing else, you might force the other guy to ask for peace. They will attack you again soon anyway, so you might want to reject any peace offer, unless you want to spend the time rearming.

but now first attacker advantage has gone, isn't there a strong case for building orbital fleet managers and using ships in orbit?

That's been my experience so far. Since first strike isn't much of an advantage any more, the extra firepower you get from being in orbit is a major help.

it should build some ships with 4 or 5B capacity, wait 'til *all* 10B troops are ready and THEN attack

Yes I agree completely the AI should conduct the war this way, it should also fleet those with a strong fleet. But it does'nt and definately will not until 1.3 is released. Also to be fair its impossible for the developers to counter every strategy we come up with. Often the changes they make to the AI script, open up new AI weaknesses u can take advantage of.

In answer to the original post, I can't say I've tried this (because I haven't yet had to) but now first attacker advantage has gone, isn't there a strong case for building orbital fleet managers and using ships in orbit?

I would say no there isn't. Orbitual fleet manager, planetary defense etc are all still fairly useless in my opinion. U r better concentrating your ships together, even if u can not go toe to toe with the opposition fleets, u can hit and run. Wear the opposition down. I only ever rely on soldiering ability, plus hit and run tactics on troop transports to defend my planets, also have very, very fast troop transports dedicated to ferrying population around, so I do not lose a world. This is of course when u have not had time to put into place the above discussed strategy's.

Yes I agree completely the AI should conduct the war this way, it should also fleet those with a strong fleet. But it does'nt and definately will not until 1.3 is released. Also to be fair its impossible for the developers to counter every strategy we come up with. Often the changes they make to the AI script, open up new AI weaknesses u can take advantage of.

Have you made them aware of this strategy? I think it should be pretty obvious to the devs (and anyone who's played the game) that the AI isn't too clever with population management, but maybe they aren't aware it can be exploited quite so profitably which is why they've not paid it much attention?