When IS it time for war, When do you decide to go ???

antracer

Join Date 02/2006

When IS it time for war, When do you decide to go ???

The Thought:

I find myself waiting. Waiting. Waiting. I check the graphs, I check the stats, I check my pulse... yup, still alive. It's time to go to war. Isn't it?

I actually played a game the other day on a large map with 9 opponents on tough and NEVER fought a war... I wanted too, really I did. I stopped early, as when it got to three they had no chance.

Next game I upped the difficulty. I was in it for the most part. I left the allow surrenders on, and you know 4 of the players all surrendered to the Korath, within a few years of each other. They tripled in size overnight and then decided I was 'in the way'. Neddless to say they had me 3 to 1 and then some.

The problem is, all through the game I felt I was was waiting too long. I didn't re-design ships because I was 8 turns away from the next weapon. I waited to attack my weak neighbor until he was big enough to extend the conflict, and then once involved you know the Torians on the other side of the galaxy had to declare and try to split my empire in half. I had the Terrans with a MIlitary rating of ZERO, but I wasn't on the ball, choosing instead to focus on getting Medium Hulls and decent weapons. In hindsight, it really doesn't make alot of sense to do that... It's not like they would be fighting back with anything.

I'm beginning to think I'm chicken-sh** when it comes to walking over to the next store neighbor and explaing that the planet he's on belongs to 'I'... I begin to wonder if I've always been this way, at least in game.

I'm definitely being intentionally over cautious, and it's starting to cost me games. Do I really have to be that nice to the computer aliens?

When IS it time to say when?

When do you pull the trigger on the guy next store?

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In my current Suicidal game, I thought it was going to be an easy joy ride halfway through as the Terrans... but the Korath became insanely tough after they declared war on me... their research is incredibly high, and they researched the Doom Beam (or w/e the highest beam weapon is) in 2 turns. Even though I had 5 other civ's declare war on them with me, none of them were powerful enough to do anything at all.

I have lost a very high number of ships, even huge hulls, since every single battle entails a Korath fleet of 900-0-0 against a similar fleet of my own. Their fleets are usually stock full to the 58 miniaturation level, and every new defender they make is a 168-0-0 small hulled behemoth. I immediately traded and researched better shield techs, but since it took some time getting new ships into the battle, most of my older fleet got wiped out, although I still caused more damage to the Korath, and am slowly gaining territory on them.

It is one of the best conflicts I have been in against the AI to date, and is quite great having huge battles with over 30 ships involved in a single duel. (I usually watch every battle just for the cinematics of it all).

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Question to ALL:

Do you not redesign your warship model after every new military tech you research? To keep your warships up to date, so your planets don't make old designs?

When I get a new weapon, I go to through my ships, upgrade the current design ("defender M1" e.g.), and add the new weapons and save ("defender M2"). Then I delete, or obsolete the old defender M1, this auto switches all planets building the M1 to the M2. This way just keep building warships, and you will always stay with the latest design.

Usually the change isn't too drastic this way, and you won't need to do upgrades too often. This way, I don't need to worry about the 'wait for the next weapon' thing.

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I don't do it after every new tech. I'll usually pop into the shipyard, tweak the design, look at the difference in numbers and ask myself how significant is the net change from old design to new. I'll also look at if my current designs are still outpacing the AI. If it is and the AI's aren't looking at any significant improvements anytime soon, then I can't justify the cost.

If the AI's are about to catch up, I look at techs I can reach before the AI's catch me, plan out my next ship design, and start stockpiling cash for the coming military upgrade.

I generally know who I want to make war on and what my first steps would be in a perfect world. Then I plan out (roughly) the fleet(s) I would need to make the first step succeed. As soon as those forces are ready, I go the next turn.

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