Playing above Crippling difficulty

The AI is only balanced on 'intelligent' After that the AI gets extra bonuses etc. Below that the AI is penalised. Therefore to play a balanced game play against intelligent civs all the time.

Wouldnt suprise me if the Galciv 2 AI can cheat at higher levels. The Civilisation 4 AI also cheats on every level, makes the game unplayable IMO.

The only way i can beat masochist so far is to play with all set to inteligent and one or two set to incredible. That one or two is generally the humans or Thalians because they're generally not dominant.

They always completely dominate me technoligically, i just don't build enough tec planets to keep up with the way they build research on every planet. However my economy/population is generally better than theirs. This leaves me with the following strategies :

1) grab resources. If you get 2 military, you're in good shape.
2) research up to an evil weapon, and then defense try to top out. (against whatever the incredible players are using)
3) research up a different weapon type, and build up. New weapon doesn't need to be as strong. (evil weapon is good here as well)
4) attack with a few fleets with new weapon. (and upgrade existing ships to keep pace)


I've found the AI doesn't realize that the part of your navy that's killing him needs to be defended against. It must take some average or something. Usually by the end of the war, you'll see him start to build ships with small amounts of defense against your new weapon type.

The AI also doesn't switch weapon types, or at least it takes him forever to decide to do so. So getting that top line defense is key.

Lastly don't give up. The AI often has a huge advantage, but doesn't exploit it. Often you'll be able to focus you're firepower and take a few planets and get caught up tec wise. As long as you have a good economy, after this it gets easier.

Above crippling I believe the AI gets the 200% bonus to everything , making it simply impossible to keep up in the beggining. To expand you will probably need to gang up on the losing side of a war and grab some planets before the winning side does.

yep, that's the key. i almost always beat maso, but i sweat alot in the beginning. i have NOT played maso at anything but gigantic tho so i can't comment on how bad it will be on smaller maps.

play to survive at first, then after you have time to build your infrastructure start picking the ai off with care.

use tech trading to keep near the competition tech lvl. build a monster economy so you can afford to buy opponent troop transports. they may still fight wars, but if you grab all the transports as they are built you drain thier populations AND make their wars pointless. in other words, keep the borders stable until YOU decide to change them. that one ai who was gonna run away and eventually overwhelm you now just grows within his own borders, wasting his ships bashing other ai ships.

resource control is a must at this lvl too. you can't let those ai economies have you outnumbered AND outgunned. keep constructors stationed near starbases to poach those that get shot up in those little wars that keep popping up.

keep everyone happy with you right up until you are ready to eliminate them. be careful of actual alliances tho, those can become a problem.

hope this helps some, gl

I play at suicidal level all the time. The AI at the start will zoom ahead of you, he will colonise more planets, gain tech at a breathtaking speed and build a nasty looking military force. This is because the AI is cheating with a 200% bonus to military/social and research production. But the developers have stated repeatedly this is the case, its to give players like me a challenge. Its simply impossible at the present time to develop a AI that can compete against a human being, it will remain so for a long time to come.

The AI however does have some serious weaknesses that means a good player will win in the end. Those are:-

1) Poor planetary development, this undermines the AI's 200% bonus, meaning u can match there production rates by mid/end game by developing your planets well.

2) The AI performs with average competence in a war. The AI leaves ships in orbit around every planet to defend them (I do not leave 1). This means u can concentrate your forces to take 1 or 2 planets at a time. The AI also lacks the killer instinct when trying to conquer planets, meaning you can use a very fast troop transport to replace population/soldiers lost in frontier worlds from interior worlds.

3) To survive early get trade routes to your potential threats, try to get spin control center as soon as possible, this will stop u being attacked by the AI's and give u some breathing space. An alternative to this is try to strike at a neighbour quickly and gain a planet advantage, negates an AI's bonuses.

Hope this helps u compete at higher levels.

At higher levels it is essential that you get positive cashflow as soon as possible and avoid being attacked while you are developing.

You must:


Win the colony race by using fast transports to grab border worlds.
Get trade as soon as possible and max trade routes.
Get a min defense up as soon as other empires develop ships.
Get production up at running and get ahead in one weapons tech by trade or research.
Choose one neighbor early as a victim, so that you get two empires worth of production during the course of the game
Try to trade or research aphro for pop bonuses as well as keeing morale in the green
Get eyes out by using sensors or eyes of the universe
Get speed advantages and maintain the inititative, conquer isolated victims quickly with your speed advantage
Base your ship design to best match your victims in atk and defense
Trade with friends but never trade away the defensive tech that matches against your weapons.

Mass your forces to overwhelm the AI at critical points

use tech trading to keep near the competition tech lvl. build a monster economy so you can afford to buy opponent troop transports. they may still fight wars, but if you grab all the transports as they are built you drain thier populations AND make their wars pointless. in other words, keep the borders stable until YOU decide to change them. that one ai who was gonna run away and eventually overwhelm you now just grows within his own borders, wasting his ships bashing other ai ships.

Wow you can do that ? Ummm... That sounds pretty chessy. I take it the AI doesn't attach the proper value to losing billions of it's population. lol.

Hey anyone from stardock, for the sake of the metaverse please fix this exploit !!

I always disable tech trading personally - barring the random event (which is quite common) i prefer it like that.

it is often possible. not saying you can grab every transport from every ai, just nerf the one you see as getting out of control. transports are sorta expensive, but not so much that you can't buy lots of them if you stay on the ball. of course if it is the torians you could be in trouble, lol. you have no choice but to check for them every turn tho, cause once they fleet up you can't touch them. this is just a variant on a puppetmaster strategy i had to develop when i saw the price on a war jump from 600(with maxed diplomacy) to 600k on being patched. not saying 600 was reasonable, but 600k is just as unreasonable. and as to fixing it, that should be rough to do in a ballanced way. unless you just want to simplify the game, start making it into a straight forward slugfest. what makes this game stand out is that there IS more than one way to win. suppose you could include an algorithm to pre determing how many troops you will get when you buy that ship(you don't always get full ships) and add to the cost. that's the only part of this tactic that i see as being cheesy. other than that it is just straight forward ship buying. oh, and you could make ships more expensive/impossible to buy from an ai at war.

I can handle masochist on medium maps with some sweating, but sucidial just makes me give up in digust. Maybe I should try with gigiantic maps with sucidal...
I found mascohist on gigantic maps quite easy compared to medium maps.

i believe you. i am playing on medium maps now at only tough lvl, to get that racial medal knocked out. had to seriously adjust my strategies for it. got spanked hard first game trying my maso/gigantic ones, lol. map size changes the character/pacing of the game tremendously.

I just think you should only get the transport, and if the ship is out of orbit, then the price should be somewhat absorbant to get the troops with it.

I just started my first game at maso (or whatever the highest is) having won on all lower settings. So far I'm hanging in there. There hasn't been any wars yet. I just got the evil weapons so I'm gearing up to take out my weakest neighboor. I think on maso you need to really focus on your ecomony to compete because the AI gets a 200% bonus.

transports are not especially cheap. try out the tactic and see if you find it terribly unballancing. some ai buy so many transports that you can go broke fast trying to manage them with this technique. others like thalan seem to go for fewer ships in my experience and are much more vulnerable to it. of course they are fairly passive most games so...

so, if you want to complain based on the insanity of it i won't argue with you i doubt it's much of a threat to the MV tho. of course i don't play MV for score so perhaps at optimal settings for megascores it would be more of a problem.

You have almost zero chance of keeping up technologically through your own sweat and toil. Maybe, just maybe you can keep pace if you build almost nothing but research buildings and set the slider high...but it'll be a race whether you get the infrastructure down before the other races come a-warring.

If you have tech trading on, you can neatly circumvent the difficulty in keeping up in the research race by...not even trying. Build economy buildings instead and buy all your tech in. You'll need *some* research buildings in order to research those things the AI doesn't care about (ie sensors) or if nobody is willing to be friends and sell you weapons at a reasonable cost, but mostly it's about cash flow. When the invasion phase starts, tag along with a strong AI who doesn't hate you who is picking apart somebody smaller. Let him do the dirty work, then sneak in at the last minute with your transports to steal the planets from under their nose. Really, this should annoy the AI, but at the moment it doesn't seem to! It's a good idea to have used some of your enormous cashflow to get advanced espionage on the races you're invading since I'm fairly sure that boosts the odds you'll steal tech on a successful invasion. Do something similarly underhand with resources. Park your constructors somewhere near the starbases, wait for a stronger AI friendly to you to take them out (assuming you're not strong enough yourself) then swoop in to claim them before they do. Again, this *should* piss the AI off, but it doesn't.

If you're playing with tech trading off on the highest levels...well, when you work out a way to win convincingly please be sure to come back and let me know.

Here are some of the things I do in beating Suicidal on the largest map with max races. Masochistic is really not that bad if you play the game right.

+ Take note of your adjacent neighbors and align with the stronger ones. This way they are less likely to attack you. Once you create an Alliance with them you will have buddies in a strategically nice location.
+ Make sure you do not neglect your military early on or everyone attacks you
+ See what weapon type your alliance members are focusing on. You then focus on stuff you can trade with them for those weapons.
+ Create trade routes quickly and make sure you are using your max routes
+ Get your population up as fast as possible. At 100% you get a significant boost in population growth.
+ Your tax rate should be in the 40 percentile for most of the game with most of your planets having 100% morale. If you are not getting this you most likely do not have enough stock exchanges and morale boosting achievements.
+ In the middle part of the game monitor the techs to make sure no one is going for Technology victory.
+ Get your diplomacy up and do not trade your diplomatic techs.
+ There is no shame in giving techs/money for peace.
+ Influence is a waste of time (at least for me).
+ The Colonies tab in the Civ Manager is your best friend. Make sure everything is at optimal.

Awesome tips, Thanks! Glad to hear that I'm not missing something as far as the AI zooming ahead at higher levels. I'll try some of these tactics and see if I can win a game on Maso.

As far as the AI, yea I figured the AI was not programmed to actually compete against Human players using the same rules. They'd probably have to develop a serious breakthrough in artificial intelligence to do that.

If you're playing with tech trading off on the highest levels...well, when you work out a way to win convincingly please be sure to come back and let me know.

I play suicidal, 1.2, no tech trading, starting relations unknown, everything abundant, medium map size or lower (rubbish pc) tech speed very slow (a very enjoyable game) or very fast (not so enjoyable, but quick and higher metaverse scores), enhanced AI algorithems enabled.

I can win every time, using different methods, but probably the easiest is play a neutral race, take 70% population growth and the rest in soldiering, select war party. Aim to get, after the colony rush, trade, diplomacy (upto Total Majesty) well building up your military. Once you have spin control center with 8 ships in orbit and 2-3 trade routes with your neighbours, plus high diplomacy u are ok. U can then play to win which ever way u want.

Posted my strategy in the " AI Suggestions " post by Random 50; reply 13.