Suicidal = impossible?

One thing I did notice is that Metaverse games, people manage to play on the hardest difficulty, but usually on:

1) Tiny maps
2) As Korath

So it negates the AI's percentage advantage, and their race has such a ridiculously overpowered ability it evens the playing field overall.

I would say yes, playing a real game on Suicidal is pretty much impossible without some form of 'metagaming' (ie: 'abusing' rules, like selling AI's planets deep in your influence just to flip them back again).

Also for the research, the AI are crazy when tech trading is on, they just give away their techs to other AI so they are always more advaned than you most of the time.

Suicidal is easy with practice.

Build up to it slowly, get used to each difficulty level...

For example, here is how I beat the AI with Altarians on a Medium Map with 9 enemies on Suicidal:
Altarian Rebellion AAR.

There are many, many other approaches if that one doesn't appeal to you.

Hope that helps,
~ Wyndstar

I play on gigantic maps with very few habitable planets and refresh the map until I get spawned far away from anyone else. That way, if the AI declares war against me, I take out his starbases and my empire will hopefully be out of range. Other than that, get research treaties early on (trade your supertechs if you must), keep a lookout for opportunities to poach other people's kills (station a transport or two near minor race worlds) and if you can bribe your opponents to go to war with each other, do so.

Well, I managed to stay on top in research and had the upper hand with military too, then the drengin suddenly snagged 5 planets from other ai's within a matter of 3 turns and left me in the dust. the next thing I knew, I was being attacked by fleets with 400+ attack power while the best thing I could make was a large ship with a bunch of upgraded lasers on it (about 12 damage). :/

Wyndstar, I would love to hear what some of these 'many, many' approaches are. I've been tackling suicidal games lately and the only chance I have so far is using strategies I've learned from you.

I'm in the midst of a medium/common map suicidal. The Yor had an awesome starting location and grabbed more planets than everyone else combined. I killed a couple of the AI, but the AI tech so quickly at suicidal that their ship quality is crazy. I'm using an all-factory approach right now, and teching isn't very fast.

So far, my primary advantage is logistical. The AI doesn't seem to use large fleets as effectively and takes longer to tech to bigger hulls. Since I'm all factory, I can spit out low quality ships really quickly. Huge stacks of low quality ships can sometimes kill small stacks of high quality ships.

If you have a tech disadvantage, you can try planet exchanges. Take an enemy planet, sell it back to them, retake, etc. Repeat until you steal their high end techs.

I know that people use tactics like this in other games as well, so it's not uncommon. But it feels kinda unfair to me. I guess it still costs a transport and soldiers, but still...

Heh, I don't know. I'm still playing and surviving okay. I did make a major weapon upgrade when I took some of the Yor's planets, so I'm getting more competitive. I'm also nearing the psionic weapons, so that will make a huge difference. But the military timeline chart shows Yor's military rating soaring above mine and I haven't seen a glimpse of these powerhouse ships he might be hiding somewhere.

I don't think I'm going to pick Yor as an opponent for suicidal after this game. They are tough, especially since they have a huge soldiering advantage. It's hard to take planets and they can take it back so easily. Maybe if and when I get as good as Wyndstar or some of the other elite players, heh.

Hmm...The AI isn't very good at combat, is it? In my current game, the majority of the Yor's strength is garrisoned around random planets, that I can pick off one by one. It rarely builds the fleet manager, so a big stack of much weaker fighters can take any planet.

If it created fleets with most of its ships, it could easily overrun me. Instead, it seems happy to occasionally send one fleet with a transport and 2 not so strong escorts. I see it coming a mile away since I have Eye of the Universe. The AI doesn't seem to bother to research sensor techs, so it doesn't see my fleets.

I have noticed that more of the AI's planets are specialized nicely now, instead of getting a random assortment of buildings. Since I'm playing all-factory, I get a twinge when I conquer an AI research planet and I have to decommission a dozen research buildings.

Are you playing DA or the TA beta?

I found that I had a harder time in TA with an all-X approach, there's a changelog somewhere that mentioned the loss when focussing production one way or the other was increased.

Oh, I'm playing DA. I've been playing this game for a while, but I'm new to the high difficulty games. I didn't want all the new stuff in TA to completely mess me up. This is also my first time trying the all-factory approach, so I'm probably playing it in a very non-optimal fashion.

I wouldn't be too surprised if the all-factory and all-research approaches were specifically targeted by the developers to be less effective. The top players seem to beat suicidal quite easily (i.e. see Wyndstar's comments). That means the developers probably put in some measures to make TA a challenge for them. I haven't really followed the changes in TA that much, so I don't know for sure though.

I used to always use all labs or all factory on suicidal until I started playing the TA beta. The mixed labs/factory approach that seems best there worked so well I've adopted it in DA also. Basically, I go nearly all factory for production buildings, but labs on research bonus squares/tech capital planets. I believe Mumblefratz has championed a similar approach. If there is a tech I need, I go 100% research until I get it. With my new playstyle I've usually got a decent number of planets and always (MVL excepted) play with very fast research, so it doesn't take too long to get tech that way.

TA doesn't seem any harder to beat on Suicidal, but does seem a bit tougher to beat really quickly, which will probably depress scores somewhat. There are other factors that may balance that out though.

How would this be different from the standard strategy of specializing planets?

Having production planets, research planets, money planets, etc? Many people who specialize planets like this will compromise if there are bonus squares.

High PQ research planets with the percentage based research coordinator building running at 100%, especially with a tech capital, can output a lot. Add economic bases and one planet can output more research than every other planet combined.

If you have a mixed bunch of production and research, I'm not so sure I see the advantage over the standard.

Hi!

Unfortunatelly that's true. Also, the bigger the galaxy, the less competent AIs are. My gigantic galaxy rare everything suicidal game never felt even close to my medium suicidal games, for which AIs were optimized.

BR, Iztok

Focusing in an all-x doesn't work so well anymore... but as with every change they make its a matter of adapting. I've had no problems with an all-x in the TA betas... and all labs is easier than ever with the Altarians.

As for the many strategies... pick one you like. There are sub-optimal combinations that will rarely work, or only work with a lot of practice (try making most of your income through trade routes on suicidal. Can be done, but the effort isn't worth it 99% of the time).


Basically, from a looooong meta view of the game, on suicidal - I just beat the AI in one thing, and use that one thing along with a little balancing to win. For instance, my first AAR was because I wanted a tech win.


But sometimes, like here, I really wanted to just beat the AI by dominating space with ships. It is, IMO, MORE efficient to never build combat craft and stick to only transports (very easy with just allies... read my rough outline in My Greatest Comeback Win Ever!), but say that you just WANT to beat suicidal using combat ships.

Well, take the military party, and all combat bonuses... and then actually research all the bonus techs... maybe even go good. A +40% repair rate isn't that bad when you have a bunch of 200 hp huge hulls flying around. Or use fleets of mediums. It is HARDER to start by taking the military bonuses vs. economic (a little harder, not much different really once you get used to it), and you might not get as large a score... but in the TA beta I've played games (with a mix of labs and factories) where I made battlecruisers with 450 hp EACH with over 1000 pts of combined attack and defense... by stacking up on bonuses.


OR, win through diplomacy. Go with all diplo bonuses, and research the diplo techs first, and then just buy the AI out from underneath them.

OR win through speed. Build an overlapping array of 16 starbases that all give +3 speed to one square next to a planet. Launch ships, and then slingshot them 48 spaces to anywhere you like. Spore ships are great with a "warp tunnel" set of starbases like that set up.

The thing is, the AI plays an OK game (good job Frogboy, the following is not a critique of your AI coding skills), but is horrible at tactical combat, managing its fleets, invading planets in a timely manner, defending the planets it has, knowing when it is losing, knowing when it should not trade, allowing planets to be flipped, managing morale and pop growth, researching for a tech win, etc. etc. etc. Just pick a weakness, focus and exploit.


Give me a scenario and a play style you would prefer, and I could tell you how I would approach the problem. If I had free time, I might even be able to do up an AAR to show how I did it. But the game has so many play styles available, and so many settings, it is hard for me to write a strategy guide for how you play. That is what is so great about this game and gives it its replay value. A tense 9v1 suicidal cage match on a tiny map is a very different tempo and difficulty than a 9v1 in an immense galaxy. I prefer to do my demos on medium maps, just because those are the defaults, and as Iztok mentions, what the AIs are best designed to handle.

Hope that helps,
~ Wyndstar

Thanks for the long and very informative post. That's exactly what I'm looking for at this stage in my skill development. Detailed AAR's are wonderful for learning the basics on how to implement various advanced strategies. But it's the details that make or break a strategy, and details can only be learned through experience. A player could try one of your strategies and execute the major aspects properly, but still lose horribly because the details were suboptimal and they lacked the experience to be flexible.

I just need the general strategic frameworks that expert players developed, and I can go to my own game and learn how to incorporate it into my own playstyle.

By the way, I'm still going strong in my medium suicidal match. The only problem is that the Yor have to be the most annoying AI to break. Tough planets to invade and only 3 moves per turn is making my offensive into a crawl. I've captured 15 of its planets and it has yet to capture one of mine, so I hope I'm winning even though its military rating is triple that of my own.

Hi!

AI's military doesn't matter if it's not in your way to AI's planets or resource starbases. You don't win by destroying their ships, but by taking their planets. Take most of them, and their econ will collapse from just a big ships' maintenance costs. If you really want to take ALL their planets, you actualy shouldn't destroy all their military, because then you risk they'll surrender to someone else.

BR, Iztok

The military rating seems to be very deceiving. The AI puts most of their ships in garrison around their planets and rarely ever pops them out to do something worthwhile. I have Eyes and from what I can see, they only have 2 fleets in play and only one of them has a transport. I have surrendering turned off, but it looks like I'll have to kill all their ships anyways.

Soon after the Yor declared war on me, relatively early in the game, it sent a handful of transports into my space. I killed all of them because they were lightly defended. Since then, it just sends 1 transport every handful of turns. Sometimes it is defended and sometimes it is alone. This is some weird AI programming, if you ask me. I have a lot of examples of weird AI behavior in this one game.

While this is the one of the tougher wars I've played through in this game, it's only tough because the AI is teching faster than me, so can build better quality ships. Otherwise, it is just showing me a ton of holes in the offensive AI behavior.

Wow, Wyndstar... I never would have thought of that. I didn't think the bonus stacked. I need to read more.

I guess, by the same token, you can build the same array to give -32 to enemy ship movement. That would make the array impossible to penetrate. Put it near your important core-worlds, and you can't be invaded. Unless, of course, fleet speed can never go below 1 or the A.I. is smart enough to build its own "warp-cannon" to defeat it.

Fleet speed will always be at least 1, and no, the AI won't build an array to counter it. They don't need to. The speed effects only apply to ships that start their turn inside the field, so any ship with enough speed to get from outside the field into range to attack the bases could beat it. Not saying they will do this, but that's how they should go about doing so if they chose to. Note this same tactic is the best way to take out the Yor.

Perhaps the most diabolical use of starbases I ever heard of is the sticky trap. Assemble 12 constructors in each sector of an opponent's territory. Spread them out to get overlapping coverage with the resulting bases. Build military bases, then give each base the two enemy speed modules, slowing every ship they have down by at least 3 movement points, generally more. Invade at your leasure, as they will not be able to attack your ships for several turns.

I claim no credit for this, IIRC it was one of Wynstar's brainchildren.

It was indeed, and thank you for giving me credit.



~ Wyndstar

I currently play at the painful level. I haven't played the harder levels yet because it seems that one needs to really understand the game mechanics and to know of and take advantage of the various exploits in the game in order to do well at those levels.

Also, almost all strategy postings I've seen omit the details about the setup conditions. Most people, I suspect, have hidden preferences that they never mention. They will favor a certain race when they play (go look at the GalCiv2 home page web poll where people have voted for their favorite races}, choose their foes carefully, set up a certain kind of galaxy, etc, etc, etc. Almost everyone wants to play a game where they can crush all their AI opponents every single game and they plan accordingly. That's fine. You paid for the game, so play it in whatever way gives you the most enjoyment.

However, if someone plays at a high difficulty level, does this mean that they can indeed play and win at that level regardless of how the game is set up or which race they are. I don't know the answer to that. Does anyone know?

I like to play games where my goal is to simply survive and to overcome the unexpected. I don't know how many people play the game my way, but this is how I usually set up my games.

My galaxies will be medium or larger (throw dice to select).

Next, I set all of these following options are set to RANDOM: habitable planets, number of planets, number of stars, star density, number of anomolies, number of asteroid fields, and tech rate. NO minor races (I don't like to play against races that wear KICK ME signs on their backs). All victory conditions enabled as well as allow surrenders. Tech trade is on and so is blind exploration. NO events and NO super abilities (I like to let the AI develop their core abilities without any superimposed distortion).

My race will be either Custom (which I do like) or one of the 12 majors (throw a 12 side die). I choose my abilities and starting techs based on a general concept of how I intend to play this particular game. As the game unfolds, however, I often have to make major changes in my style of play which is part of the fun for me. You can set up to maximize a certain ability and then have the setup conditions chosen negate that.

Next I pick 3 to 9 (throw dice) random AI races.(with no going back to adjust my abilities and techs based on the number of unknown AI I will be facing). I set all AI to painful.

When the game starts there is no using CTRL-n to get a better home planet (you play with what you get).

With this setup, do not expect to win all your games (this would probably turn off a lot of people). On the plus side though, many games can be really spectacular in the way they play out.

In one game I lost, I was facing 5 AI. My homeworld was in the bottom center. One AI was to my left, another to my right and two were in front of me. All 4 were hostile towards me, and all 4 were aggressive races. There was no pleasing these guys and all 4 declared war on me within two turns of each other. (The 5th AI, the Krynn, had the whole top to themselves and was on friendly terms with the other 4.) While I was fighting off this bunch, the Krynn was busy expanding, building up a big fleet and researching like crazy. I was able to hold my own against the mob of 4 and was feeling good about that but I was never able to break through their lines to get to the Krynn who won a tech victory.

One of my most spectacular wins was on a gigantic map where the Yor (who held over half the galaxy and who were about 4 times bigger than I) decided to annex me. The Yor were the strongest race, mine the weakest in a 6 race galaxy. I've never seen as many AI ships and transports come at me in any DA game I've ever played. They were intent on capturing about 5 of my planets, sending in warships and swarms of transports, initially unescorted, and, as these were shot down, then transports escorted by first one, then two, then three or more armed ships. Whenever they captured a planet, they would immediately put 8 to 10 warships into orbit. Their ship weapons were about 2 or 3 levels better than mine and warships were pouring out of their factories. Things were really bleak. My only edge was faster ships. You don't win in GalCiv2 if you only defend and don't take planets, so my tactic was to consolidate and concentrate my meager forces to grind the Yor down one planet at a time, immediately destroying those that would overload my economy or which I would not be able to defend from recapture. Since everything was abundant, the Yor had planets (and ships) everywhere. Almost all my research after the war began came from captured Yor planets. I had to spend my money to build ships to stay alive. What little I had to spend on research was given to ship defenses and that eventually turned the tide. The other AI, although friendly, never traded me any tech, nor did they give me any ships to fight the Yor. Looking back, what was the most remarkable thing about the game is that I was never able to research and build anything beyond an enhanced level factory or a medium hulled ship. This was as far as I got before the Yor attacked. Even capturing enemy planets and using spies never gave me those advanced techs. A beautiful game - a long game - probably the best I've played so far.

My most recent game was on a gigantic galaxy against 9 AI. Everything was rare, so all of us only had our home stars to work with. There was one (a class 5 barren) free planet in the whole galaxy which I got to first. The AI battled amongst themselves until there were just 4 AI left. My big threat was the Alterians who were hostile towards me and were allied with the other three. Although hostile and the strongest race, the Alterians never attacked me (I kissed up to them and their extortions like you won't believe) and I was eventually able to make alliances with the other 3 AI races. This done, I then attacked the Alterians while the 3 other AI sat on the sidelines since they were allies to both of our races. With the Alterians gone, I won an alliance victory. I was never ranked higher than 4th in power in this game.

Sometimes, these settings I use give me some real surprises. In one game, the Korx, who normally take a back seat in most games, developed into a real powerhouse. Their economy was phenominal and their logistics was maxed out as far as you can take it. Their fleets had the most powerful hulls which in turn had the most powerful weapons you can squeeze into them. If you want excitement, try taking one of those puppies down!

I like playing on medium maps because the games are of reasonable duration. I also like gigantic because it allows the races to build up before the conflicts begin although at the cost of the games being quite a bit longer.

There is one thing I've done that I would recommend to others. Playing (in turn) as each of the AI races, play against 3 random AI races on a medium size galaxy using the above setup. These are often fun games. Do NOT give in to the temptation of making any non_random selections. By playing a number of games this way as each one of the races, you will get a feel for how to exploit the strengths and avoid the weaknesses of each race to win games under widely varying conditions. I can win games (that does not mean every one) with any race against any mix of opponents. The big benefit of going through this exercise of playing to win with a particular AI is that it gives you an intuitive feel for what must be done to compete AGAINST that particular AI in a given situation and is a plus if you turn events and super abilities back on.

In any event, after all is said and done, I find that there seem to be more strategies and opinions out there then there are people who play the game. Ask someone a question at 3:00 PM and you will likely get a different answer then you would asking the same question at 8:00 PM. The strategy one used successfully yesterday falls apart when used in today's game which has a different mix of starting conditions. The only important thing to remember is to play the game to have fun. GalCiv2 is a great game.

I've been playing the TA beta, using immense maps with rare stars. It plays like a "medium" but speed and range technologies play a much larger role. That's why I thought Wyndstar's idea was cool... it solves a problem of moving fleets between far-flung parts of my empire. (Do fleet warp bubbles also stack?) I just finished my first such game on "Tough," and the immense distances made me lose patience and just go for the diplomatic victory. It was a good thing I did, too... one of the A.I.s that I had only recently made contact with was about to ascend.

Anyway, after a few more games with this configuration, I may ramp the difficulty up more. The AI never seems to be able to mount a decent attack on me when it has little to work with. Its fleets turtle-up over its planets where they're easy to deal with. (OFM doesn't seem to be a priority for the AI on "Tough.")

It's definitely worth upping the difficulty until it provides a suitable challenge for you. Until fairly recently, I played easier difficulties and while it was fun for a while to rampage unchecked over multiple AI at the same time, it gets boring.

Now, I actually have a chance of losing every time I play and it makes it so much more fun. There are times when every single move matters, so I spend a lot more time thinking and strategizing. At easier difficulties, I could just attack anything and not care if several other AI got pissed and declared war at the same time.

I do like playing bigger maps with rare stars/planets as well, but ya, immense is just too big. Large is a good size. Everyone is separated enough to have a fair chance at establishing their space before having to deal with any conflict.

And if you going to up the difficulty level, i would recommend playing on a larger map anyhow. Its a little easier to recover if you goof something up and your borders arent as close.