Hi!

boy, if this game had multiplayer, you guys would just die against me. theres something to be said about covering your @ss... and covering both cheeks seperately, doubling your chances.

And while you're covering those places I'll hit you somewhere else. You can't cover perfectly everything, it just costs too much. For half your costs I can build enough ships that will destroy much more of yours, because my forces will be concentrated, and yours spread out defending everything... And when you'll finally make me retreat, you'll find your border planets bombed out with mass-drivers, and abandoned thereafter - about half the previous size and empty, while my planets will be intact, producing next wave of attack ships, maybe even with your stolen tech.

BR, Iztok

So what do we do to protect our planets ?

What I do is as I've already said. I do nothing to protect my planets. I don't engage his fleets as they near my planets. I will take out any of his transports that I can easily kill, but otherwise he's free to take whatever planets of mine he will. I just make sure while he's fumbling around taking a planet here or there, I'm taking 5 or 10 of his planets. It doesn't take many turns before he's no threat and waiting to be mopped up. If you mess around defending your planets you perhaps keep him from taking a planet per turn on average but you give up taking 2 or 3 planets per turn to do it. It's not worth it. You're actually extending the war and giving your opponent a better chance of success by defending your planets vs. not defending them.

Look at it this way. By successfully defending your planet you keep your opponent from gaining a planet that at best will take 6 months to become productive. By instead taking one of his productive planets, you immediately deprive him of that planets production. Obviously, if this is a one for one tradeoff then it's equal. But I suggest that the fleet you use to protect one of your planets per turn could be used to capture at least two of his planets per turn. This makes the comparison very lopsided in favor of attack.

Using this method against suicidal AI, I take 50 of my opponents planets for every 5 of mine they take (usually it's less than this), clearly why bother defending?

So what do we do to protect our planets ?

I do take time to protect my planets in a very basic way.

The AI usually attacks any of yr planets that r close to it. So I park a ship in orbit of my front line planets, this dicourages the AI hugely.

The ships I use for this duty r, frontline ships that r damaged, ships I have bought off other races (waiting till I can afford to upgrade them) and my ships that need upgrading and not suitable for frontline duty.

With this method, its very, very rare u lose a planet.

I use very different tactics. I don't waste my ships (or my money maintaining so many ships) defending my planets.

I don't waste ships defending my planets

I don't know guys, I build tiny hull "defenders" with no engines/weapons/defenses. They cost a couple hundred bcs and no maintenance fees are incurred. Some planets have their shipyard full of these, others have five to eight with some real bad ass capital ships/heavy fighters waiting to pounce. This has been my favored strat since trying it out about three games ago and it works great. Like I said, the no maintenance factor is why I really enjoy it, and the AI thinks twice before invading. Furthermore, and don't quote me because I haven't checked the stats yet), having that many defenders should increase my military ranking even more.

And while you're covering those places I'll hit you somewhere else. You can't cover perfectly everything, it just costs too much. For half your costs I can build enough ships that will destroy much more of yours, because my forces will be concentrated, and yours spread out defending everything... And when you'll finally make me retreat, you'll find your border planets bombed out with mass-drivers, and abandoned thereafter - about half the previous size and empty, while my planets will be intact, producing next wave of attack ships, maybe even with your stolen tech. BR, Iztok

ahhh but you're wrong. that's exactly what i'm saying. i cover EVERY SINGLE WORLD I OWN with a defense fleet, AND maintain 12-24 attack fleets, AND cover every world with full military starbase. and still gross 1500BC a turn .

You'd never get enough ships past my border to bug me, you'd have to pass through at last 5 attack fleets, and even then, if you managed to get a fleet or 2 past, my defense fleets would kill you. I'm total protection here, i'm a master economist, i have enough money in my games to support 8 ship fleets on each world, and just as many ships in 24 attack fleets. Not to mention i keep about 60 constructors in reserve. When i capture a system, i can make a decked out military base there in 1 turn.

You'd simply never get the oppourtunity to use your transports on any of my worlds. I've been playing galciv2 since it came out. in the entirety of that time i've lost 2 planets TOTAL, ever, out of countless games. Now i'm not saying i'm undefeatible. There is a strategy out there to counter everything, but what i am saying, is once i reach a certain point with my defensive strategy, there's virtually no way to penetrate it. I don't fight wars in my own territory, i never give anyone the chance.

There is a strategy out there to counter everything

Absolutely correct. Also there are many different strategies that work, all of which work better in some circumstances than in others.

Your strategy clearly stresses defense. There's nothing wrong with this per se, but clearly it requires some fleets dedicated to defense. Let's make a hypothetical comparison. Suppose we both have the same number and strength of fleets. I take those fleets, dedicate them entirely for attack and in ten turns against equivalent opponents, capture 50 of may opponent’s planets while my opponent captures 5 of mine. You take the same fleets, dedicate some for defense and because you have less fleets dedicated to attack, you capture 25 planets in ten turns while losing none. The net result is that in ten turns I have 45 more planets (and my opponent has 45 less planets) while in your case you have 25 more planets. Which of these outcomes is superior? Obviously I’m 20 planets ahead.

You can certainly argue about the explicit numbers used in my example, but in reality saying that my opponent captures 5 of my planets is a gross over estimate. Typically, it’s a lot if my opponent captures two of my planets. If you can take the fleets that you would otherwise use for defense and capture an extra two planets in ten turns then you break even between the two strategies. I submit that the fleets that you dedicate for defense can capture far more of your opponent’s planets than the number of planets that you prevent your opponent from capturing. If that’s the case then your fleets dedicated to defense have been wasted.

ahhh but you're wrong. that's exactly what i'm saying. i cover EVERY SINGLE WORLD I OWN with a defense fleet, AND maintain 12-24 attack fleets, AND cover every world with full military starbase. and still gross 1500BC a turn . You'd never get enough ships past my border to bug me, you'd have to pass through at last 5 attack fleets, and even then, if you managed to get a fleet or 2 past, my defense fleets would kill you. I'm total protection here, i'm a master economist, i have enough money in my games to support 8 ship fleets on each world, and just as many ships in 24 attack fleets. Not to mention i keep about 60 constructors in reserve. When i capture a system, i can make a decked out military base there in 1 turn. You'd simply never get the oppourtunity to use your transports on any of my worlds. I've been playing galciv2 since it came out. in the entirety of that time i've lost 2 planets TOTAL, ever, out of countless games. Now i'm not saying i'm undefeatible. There is a strategy out there to counter everything, but what i am saying, is once i reach a certain point with my defensive strategy, there's virtually no way to penetrate it. I don't fight wars in my own territory, i never give anyone the chance.

Before u had a chance to set this up, I would have conquered all yr worlds. Attack in GC2 ALWAYS beats defense.

I don't fight wars in my own territory, i never give anyone the chance.

So why do you need Orbital Fleet Managers and Planetary Defense structures?

So why do you need Orbital Fleet Managers and Planetary Defense structures?

Nice point. Touche!

Before u had a chance to set this up, I would have conquered all yr worlds. Attack in GC2 ALWAYS beats defense.

UGH you are totally missing my point.... I'm going to grab a screenshot in a little while to illustrate.

So why do you need Orbital Fleet Managers and Planetary Defense structures?

JUST IN CASE!!! It's called having a backup plan to cover you A$$.

ok, screenshot

every light blue dot is one of my worlds protected by a defense fleet, stats of which are circled at the bottom right. All Defense Fleets are identical.

every red circle is alpha fleet, stats of which are circled at the bottom left. All Alpha Fleets are identical.

Each orange circle is a fully upgraded military starbase.

The purple territory is brand new, surrendered to my by the yor a few turns ago.

teal circled worlds are new former yor worlds who do not yet have defense fleets.

It looks to me like you simply enjoy the management aspect of the game. The thought of trying to make 64 identical defense fleets and 26 identical assault fleets and stationing them along the borders of my territory would cause me to tear my hair out.

It just seems to me (and I am betting to a lot of other people here) that if you took the production used in making all those planetary defender fleets and put it into offense, you'd be able to take out anyone you chose. heck, the Drengin have 8 undefended planets and an unmined military resource (!) within two sectors of your borders.

Maybe you don't want a military victory, that's cool. It is comforting to know that you can sit there an build up a tech or alliance victory and not have to worry about an invasion. And it doesn't hurt you to have fleets with movement 5. But if you plan to conquor, you could have been a lot further along if you hadn't bothered with all those defensive fleets OR defensive structures.

ok, screenshot

Impressive. Clearly a lot of work went into this. It sure looks to me you easily have all the firepower you'd need to simply wipe out all opposition. I would have to 2nd ConQuesci's comment about your enjoying the management aspect of the game. Clearly this can be a successful strategy against the AI and if this is what you enjoy then far be it from me to suggest you do otherwise.

However, in my opinion, I don't think this would be as successful against a competent human player. But I can also see that there's legitimate argument for this strategy. The only way this could ever be settled would be mano a mano in a multiplayer duel to the death.

Clearly, with you putting this kind of effort into it, no amount of argument of the superiority of offense over defense is going to sway your opinion. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree, at least until we get multiplayer.   

Well i think it's fine to agree to disagree, i was just trying to make the point that with the strategy i was talking about, at a certain point, it's not as easy as some people were saying to just waltz into my territory and do what they please.

Is it an unbeatable strategy? no of course not, there is no such thing. And you're right, when i play a game of GC2, i may play the same game for, 4 weeks, 5 weeks, maybe more. I usually play on very slow tech rate, and i nerfed all the research complexes by 50% too. I like a long game, some don't, like you all said. And yes, in this particular game, on a whim i could wipe the map clean. But that's not my style.

Notes:
the 5 movement fleets are the defense fleets, since they're always parked in orbit, i don't bother putting engines on them, more room for weapons. And as for the drengin planets, they're undefended cause i wiped out their defense fleets, and their military resource mining base. I don't want to conquer them just yet, just punish them. I took half their territory in a 6 turn war earlier...


Anyways, enough back and forth eh? to each their own. There are a lot of ways to win this game.

Well i think it's fine to agree to disagree, i was just trying to make the point that with the strategy i was talking about, at a certain point, it's not as easy as some people were saying to just waltz into my territory and do what they please.

I would have to agree that once you have this set up there's certainly going to be no waltzing going on here. Whether you can be beaten from this position at all remains to be seen. Clearly the best shot to beat it is to do so before it's fully implemented.

It's very interesting to see the variety of game types that can be played. This is clearly one that I didn't anticipate. The picture is truly worth a thousand words, without the screenshot I really couldn't picture what it was you were trying to do. I sometimes do something a little like this for research.

I play slow tech with no tech trading. I also play metaverse games so I don't mod anything. One thing you can do to increase the tech component of your score is to build a dedicated research planet. I try to find a PQ26 that upgrades to PQ32 on going neutral. I then fill the planet with neutrality learning centers, make it my tech capital (100% research bonus) and add the omega research center (50% research bonus). Just as long as the planet isn't in the dead center of a sector you can put 4 economic starbases in the same and three adjacent sectors, fill them with maufacturing modules that once full give a 24% bonus to the SP, MP and RP to your research planet (and all your other planets in the influence area of the starbases as well). You can get 16 starbases for a total research bonus of 384%. That plus the 150% from tech cap plus omega research gives a total bonus of 534%. I've gotten over 8,000 RP's per turn using this. This makes short work of the tech tree and really maximizes your tech score. I've described this to a few folks and their opinion is generally that this is interesting but probably not something they would do just because it takes so long to set up. This isn't something I do every time, but it's a different method of play that adds variety to the game.