Im sorry to PlayJeff45. It wasnt meant to be either nice or cruel. Just an observation. I thought it was funny too.

Oh hell please do not ever apologize to me. I'm a steel tradesman, You should see what I work with.  In fact I most likely will sooner or later have to apologize to you. take care and chat with you later

i have thought of a more PRACTICAL tactic that might work.

about half way thought the colony rush stop colonizing planets, instead build military starbases around your empire and have a small fleet near each of them for taking out enemy ships that approach your empire. it should protect you long enough to create a grand army of ahips and transports to when your enemy does break though you'll have a little suprise for them.

Nelio you'd like this tactic.

hope it helps, LostHero AND BlueHawk.

TO ge the military starbases up to snuff would take valuable resources I would imagine. And I'm not an expert but been there and done that. The first thing the AI does is take out that base   

yes it would be very expensive, but all races do this before war:
>Colonize planets
>Take Galactic Reasources
>find all anomalies
then they will start to declare war on people.

I apologize for apologizing.
HeeHee

Interesting. I do build military starbases but not this early in the game. I do like going to war early but the amount of money you would spend on constructors here would be better spent on fighters.

Remember, that Milt SB's are not that affective till you have researched along way down the weapons tree. Early in the game you would get little to no help from them.

by the end of the colony rush i would say that i have "taken" more planets than i have colonized. Very rarely does the AI max out it's colony ships. So a lightly armed transport with about 300 trops on it does the trick. This works for me, by no means do i think this would be the case at suicidal. In fact i don't seem to get as much value with this tactic at painful. But for tough and challenging, it works great.

Good to see your evil streak coming out a bit LostHero

@MrJakJak,

Where do i know the name JakJak from? It's not something you have just made up is it, i think i know that from somewhere.....

hehehe, my evil partner in crime. just thought you might like it, your always into that going to war early stuff

In my current game it was about turn 7 i think. The Thalans were too close to me and were after a few juicy planets that i wanted. So a tiny hull laser 1 fighter is now a level 6 ship!!!! And not 1 colony ship got in, though 3 did from the terrans

Though it's not laser 1 anymore of course.

You are all talking about blockading somthing, ie, a planet or half the galaxy to use yourself. However, wouldn't it be much more effective to stop te problem at its source? Being the enemy AI's homeworld. If you went strait there and blockaded that, it wouldnt matter how many collony ships they built, they couldn't send them anywere. I mean... why blokade one especily good planet for your exclusive use later on via a massive waste of resources when compared to one colony ship, when you can give yourself exclusive control over an entire region around an AI's space with the same amount of resources spent. You get complete control around them!

This is the only way I can see a blockade being feesable in the Colony rush stage. It works well. The AI ofcourse gets afew colony ships out before you can blockade them off but you stop there main source of production and force them to rely soley on under populated non-developed worlds, while you pick and choose what you want.

If you want to be really dirty, you can even buy the intended target of the blockades worlds off him as soon as he colonises them before your ships are in place, rendering him completely doomed.

I play on this tactic a fair bit and its best if you only go for one AI, preferably your closest neighbor with either:
-the most planets around him
-or the one thats most likely to be a threat
Never try to do it on more then one AI, two at a push if your in very close proximity and seperated from the rest of the Galaxy by a decent amount, otherwise your Econemy is ireparably damaged and you cannot feild anough collony ships before your hostages research sufficent wepons to punch threw you.

Just my Two Cents,

Fate,

Traitor, get away from me. your allied with the drengin arnt you? damn drengins. Kona want too far when he destroyed my starbases and pirated my trade, out right piracy. Thalan are my allies, so are altarin, arcean, humans and Nedians. your a traitor to us all. You, The Drengins, the Dread Lords and the PeaceMakers will pay for you attack on our empire.

Hahahahaa, my my. The poor little Torians always get the rough end of the stick.....

poor my arse. torians are just as strong as any other race you meet, their not weak.

Hey, i know. they are my favourite race, as you can see above in my medals. Just thought i'd try and play the victim card, the Drengin do seem to hate them soo much....

Why stop the AI colonizing worlds.. when you can let them develoup them, and then swoop in and take multiple planets in a coordinated strike as soon as transports come in. Thats what i did in my last Sucidal game, went 100% research strat but my starting world has 700% bonus research tile so i built nothing but research there untill i had transports, made transport ships on tiny hull fighters, built one every 3 turns, and i took half one of the AI's empire really fast , Although i did have to rush buy a fighter since he started defending his home worlds by puttin his left over colony ships there.

That's pretty much what i do. In a map with 900 or so planets i only colonize to about 30. From then on, i follow an AI's colony ship with one of transports, he colonizes it and i take right from under him....cripples their economy too...

torians are a good race, Drengin arnt the betraying bastards. sold us of to the dreadies and helped to exterminate the Archin UpHeaval. they'll pay soon enough though.



oooooh too evil, too evil. that's just a bad as what the Mantis say.

"To crush ones bones in ones jaw, to smoosh ones body beneth ones feet. These this tired the exo-skeleton and opress the brian. For this surgest I 'Mantis-Aid', made form the blood of terran hearts and tinged with the spinal fluid of terran pets. 'Mantis-Aid' drink not too your Enemies, DRINK YOUR ENEMIES, HA."

weird, huh.

This strategy only works for large/gigantic galaxies, right? Otherwise it seems that colonization will have been completed before you've researched the techs required for planetary invasion. (It's a cunning strategy, I just want to make sure I understand the limitation. )

Yes your right, that is based on a gigantic map. But also based on a very research biased game. i fill my home planet with 1 entertainment centre, 1 factory and the rest labs. The next planet is 1 factory and the rest labs, then i alternate planets between an economic world and research world. Only 1 in every 5 planets is soley a manufacturing world. Using this technique gets you through the techs very quickly. my first few techs generally are as follows,

Sensors 1
Hyperdrive - New Propulsion Techniques - Ion Drive
Xeno Communications - Universal Translator - Diplomatic Relations (for diplomatic translators)
Then i get to laser 5 as quick as i can.

next is the planetary invasion tech and then onto the terraforming techs to get Aphrodisiac.

I don't need anything past ion drive for a while cause i often take the plus 2 speed bonus, depends on who i am playing.

This works well for me on challenging and tough, you will suffer in your economy for a while and selling techs off to other races is a must, just don't sell research techs and diplomacy techs. If you sell them research techs your price per tech will drop. And you need the diplo advantage to get out of any wars that get too hot. When possible get through the diplo techs asap.

At painful i have not had as much success with this strategy, i find that i get into too much debt too quick.

Hope this helps....

whoa... your way more organised than i am. i just research what i need at the time.