Some thoughts on Crippling

(from a higher difficulty level noob)

from GalCiv2 Forums
So I've been playing on and off for two years or so, but I just started ramping up the difficulty. I have to consider myself a raw noob at playing higher difficuly, but to my surprise I am winning consistently on Crippling.

I just wanted to make a post and see if anyone else is noticing what I think I am about enemy AI with ships and tactics.

It seems like it's almost always possible to first hang in with, and then beat, a race that has a MASSIVE military lead on you. As long as you have a small, quality fleet with better speed and the Eyes of the Universe.

For example, in my current game (crippling, custom race), I started out by balancing my economy, and then researching full radioactive colonization (half the planets in the center map were radioactive). After I doubled my influence by taking all the new worlds, an alliance of Toria, Altaria and Iconia declared war on me. In late middle-game!!

So I grabbed warp drive and EOTU. Set up a tiny defensive fleet to snatch enemy transports before they could take planets. Started targeted invasions on important enemy worlds to whittle them down to size. Moved all my trade to the Arceans, who were the one friendly neighbor. Built up my planets until my economy was dominant.

In about 5 years I had totally obliterated the Iconians, and fought Altaria and Toria to a peace treaty due to my taking their capitols and then offering them back (stripped clean) as part of the peace terms. I then allied with Arcea, bribed them to keep fighting / weakening Toria and Altaria, and will win this game in another year or so with an infuence victory.  

My point is that it seems like the enemy has no answer for a smartly positioned defensive fleet. They can't take planets if they can't get transports through, and with the EOTU I can see them coming a mile away. Sure they take a planet every now and then, but I just rush-buy a trooper and snatch it right back.
Even if they zerg my space with their ships, all I do is keep my fleets away from theirs and meanwhile take their worlds one by one. Eventually their economy tanks, and then I mop up the useless fleets they've sent halfway across the map to sit next to my empty worlds.

Has anyone had a similar experience? I bet I'm going to get destroyed if I try this on Obscene :)


strategies
4,088 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The AI are great at colonizing and not so great at fighting. They seem to get a slow start on invasions. They'll send a ton of transports eventually, but if you can hit them all before they hurt you, there's a big advantage to be gained.

You should try a gig/abun Suicidal game. You don't have to play the whole game since it's long, but just to see what I mean, get whatever planets you can and start fighting pretty much out of the gate. You should find you can still out-fight the AI. That's pretty much how you have to play a Suicidal game anyway. There's no way to out-colonize them.

The AI does seem to fight better on the smaller maps. Something about big distances bogs them down. With a gigantic galaxy, you can go to war with a race on the other side of the map and they might not even send one transport.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The thing is, the AI can have a massive military but so much of it is used to defend planets that you can quickly dominate space with a few good fleets. Then you take down the planet defenders at your leisure; especially if they dont have the building that lets defenders fleet. They do this all the way up to Maso, that as far as i've gotten so far.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Oh man, I hate abundant. Too many planets! I've been wanting to try suicidal but I'm not ready yet. Especially because I've gotten used to not gearing up with military until everyone starts getting cool to me. I like the early game builder style instead. Still, maybe I'll do one game just to see how hard I get stomped.

Sounds like on suicidal, my initial colony rush will fail big-time. Because the AI is so aggressive on grabbing planets. You can't play a builder style with four worlds.

Referring to CaptainYar's point that the AI has most of their military defending planets... they definitely do, but it seems to me like the bulk of planetary defenders are low-level ships. They put all their strong fleets into enemy space and leave stacks of 20 gun ships on planets even in middle game. Then I wipe those out, and their military drops by half.

I'm all excited that I can win Crippling now, and want to get into the top 100, but I have no idea how those guys get the scores they do. And the top 25... I'm in awe.

Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm all excited that I can win Crippling now, and want to get into the top 100, but I have no idea how those guys get the scores they do. And the top 25... I'm in awe.
End of quote

Once you realize how to make the higher scores, you'll find it's not all that elusive and is in fact quite a bit of routine and tedium. Scores are fairly proprotional to the number of habitable planets in the galaxy so that may eventually be a limiting factor for you.