Count me in, as well. Usually I can see this coming, though, so I'll build a placeholder class of ships, which can be easily upgraded on the eve of war.

Although it does sometimes have humorous consequences, such as when I recently annihilated a minor civ with a transport. No I didn't just take their planet, I killed every ship they had, whether they were in fleets or not, several starbases, killed the ships in orbit, THEN took their planet. These things happen when a person puts one laser v, one zero point armor, a hull point module, and an ass load of engines on a cargo hull - then has about 6 military resources mined to 60%. Not to mention all the anomalies that have given me soldiering bonuses. Launching a 36 speed transport out of a 24 base military array gives an enourmous ass kicking range with zero chance of accidental transport intercepts.

Hell, for that matter, I had just finished taking out the Yor - every planet fell to one transport, and every planet ended with more people than my transport started with. Information Warfare FTW!

The next weapon syndrome is bad because it often means no weapons at all ^^

I can not point out enough how important it is to build something. Get these small ships with 1 attack soon. Get military starbase to amplify their attack. It is not that you should be able to pull down a whole army of an enemy he throws at you. That will not happen. You might think "they are not fast enough and not strong enough, so i have to get the hulls first and then the speed and the weapons and...". Thats not the point. The enemy just sees you dont have military at all so they will put you down as long as you are that weak. Just get your military rating up, which is based on the attack and defense in general you have.

Actually the right moment for war is when you think you can afford it - in terms of economics and in terms of enemy strength. Here the miltary rating is important as well. The race you attack might be weak, but others not and if you are too weak, you might soon have other problems as well. So just bulk up your military to be able to go to war. Its just like real life - be small and start wars and you are considered terroristic. Be big enough and you just have the right to

I also suffer fron next weapon syndrome.Or wait just a few more turns for better defenses that are slightly smaller.Just attack when you have decent population and have a clear area that you intend to attack.

Im surprised my view hasnt come up yet.  (i consistently beat the level before suicidal).

I take a gander at their planets.  If 2-3 fleets of mine working in tandem (attack once, disband and remove injured ships, recreate. rinse, repeat) will beat their typical defenses, AND i have a decent transport train going, then i attack.  The trick here is attrition...you have to avoid it.  The idea is to make certain you are taking minimum losses, so it becomes your economy/industry endurance vs theirs.  This is where we really shine vs the AI...theyll put five ships which, together would decimate you but since you can pick them off one at a time while they defend...well youre just getting free exp.  

always keep pumping out your best ship, even if you have a better weapon or engine coming.  then i just redesign, ask my governor to change everything, and move right along.  If youre at a point where your next upgrade is super huge and its punitive to build your old ship, slide the military slider down for  a few turns while your researching and the research slider up.  

I used to struggle with this problem a lot, always trying to have the best ships before I'd even think about going to war. Someone already mentioned this, just switching production to the new type of ship as soon as it is available. That is what I do too. The older ships are always on the front lines already being whittled down (although I'm usually pretty good about not losing ships; just keep rotating ships with full hp into the fray and let damaged ones heal if you can). I don't upgrade until I'm several versions past the ship I'm upgrading so as not to waste lots of money. I wait to upgrade my Stinger ships, for example, until I have Harpoon. The important thing, though, is you have to be aggressive when you get to the higher levels of difficulty. Usually I smoke a minor or two while my war machine is getting into gear (and I never deal with their fleets if they have any, just hit the planet itself with a sizeable fleet; one turn and the war should be over) and then I go after whoever is small and close to me. I usually am going for military tech as soon as my colony rush is going and I have a few basic techs (I usually try to get a morale tech that gives a passive bonus, get trade and basic diplomacy, and low level manufacturing so that I can build an econ capital, restaurant of eternity, manu capital, and diplo translators, maybe get sensors and then I head up one of the offensive weapon branches with a little bit of research, econ, and bigger ships from time to time). You have to pick off the weak, even if you're an ethically good race.

Well... In todays installment: Large map, Abund/Abund/Scat... everything else normal or random.

Decent start, everyone (that I can see) seems to have a bunch of worlds to go after. I stretched myself a little thin, but I always do. Only one resource though, an influence one. Ugh.

Somehow the Torians declared war without telling me, or any one else for that matter. They just started shooting up the place. Twas a little unnerving at first, as I was happily colonizing the crap out of the galaxy and getting basics on the good planets and running up the tech tree... They certainly sneaked up on me... but surprise is supposed to be, well... surprising, isn't it? It was really early game, I can tell you that much... Much sooner than any time in recent memory...

I didn't even have transports ready, nor any weapons... It was a quick shot through trading with all the neighbors. I allow brokering only. Can't trade what I don't research... All any one had was the basics, and the best of the lot was base level for the rail gun tree. I got the first level pretty quick, then got to bounce past the 2nd to the 3rd level for being 'creative'. That got me some ships out pretty quick. It didn't take long to figure out that the Torians had no fighters yet. They went straight to transports and just started trying to take planets.I spent awhile just shooting their troop transports and colony ships out of the galactic sky. (Yes, it was fun...)

At first, I wanted to duck out quick, as I had to research transports still. The Torians wanted nothing to do with a peace, so I decided I would go against my inclination and make this a long drawn out affair. I wanted to push myself to have to carry the war instead of clamming up and teching away and building planets. I set the goal to take at least half their planets before I would even think about letting them off the hook.

It was fun when they marched out their Frigates while I was still running my small hulls. They also got ahead on the logistics end. But I had better weapons, some defenses and the hull hitpoints. I also got ahead on the miniturization tree. For a long while I couldn't get anyone to trade techs with me, as they all looked at the Torians and figured I was toast... How wrong they were. Eventually I got a break an got Harpoons to go with my 2 damage Railguns. With the mini so high, I could put 2 guns and a harpoon along with a shot of armor and a hull hitpoint on a small hull. It was enough in numbers to outlast any fighter the Torian's had, an in numbers could take on the Frigates and win. It was pretty even for a long time.

I used a similar approach to lethstang just building ships and shuttling them to the front, upgrading designs as new stuff came along. If it was a definitive upgrade, I'd pay to have some of the older front line ships done, but mostly I just sent the old ones up front. I'd sacrafice them to do some damage as they got blown out of the sky and then mopped up with the next best things. Once I got Medium hulls, I started to turn the tide. I was able to really load them up.

6 Planets have fallen now, and I'm knocking on their home worlds door. They've been asking for peace pretty regularly now, but not until I take the homeworld system. They have alot of straggling planets all over creation, which they always seem to have. By keeping them at war and taking out their heart, many of those are starting to defect to other races...

The hardest part is the fact I don't use engines, so everything kindof crawls along... Someday I'll break down and start making some ships that move. I just make fleets and march them in pretty steady so there's always a new ship coming in.

Good reading so far from everyone. I like having new ideas rattling around in my head to try when I play.

Happy New Years too ! If you're imbibing... please have one for me!  

T

i had that problem for a while, i play Korx notechtrading games, and i noticed a few things that really made me see war in a different way,

- AI are better at the colonization phase : i have a lot of potential planets to invade

- AI are better at specializing in tech : the more techs they have over you, the more likely you are to steal a tech when invading

- my homeworld population always gets out of control as i run out of colonization options : i'll have plenty of recruits for invasions -- before i started playing warmongerlike i would shuttle people from my homeworld out to the colonies to try to alleviate it, which works i guess, but then i'd have overpopulation morale problems empire-wide down the road if i didn't concentrate hard on entertainment tech. with war I can get use of those farming tiles everyone hates, I'll have a few planets churning out troop transports non-stop, when a planet starts getting overpopulated I redistribute population to these farmtile production worlds.

- with no techtrading there really isn't that much worth trading, ships for money, money for ships.. : oh yeah! planets.

- maintaining war is expensive : but I can subsidize the costs by punking minor races for their lunchmoney. they're easy targets militarily and they also tend to need my trade routes, so they'll never forget their place. you'll even get some major race lunch money too when the conditions are right.

- warships are valued pretty well for trading, instead of decommissioning, see if another empire will offer you more for them

like me, you'll eventually hate the drengin for whole different reasons. they're your biggest competition for that sweet delicious lunch money.

Well, once I am done building constructors on most planets, there is nothing left to build but military. What else is everyone building here? Simply build whatever you ship you feel you need, and as soon as you get the next weapon tech, upgrade the design immediately and obsolete the old design. This will change your planets production of that model to the new model and you stay with the latest. You may have some old crappy ships floating around after a while, but include them in battle and let them die honorably, or use them for fun planet protecting duty.

Hi!

• When I have ships that can beat his fleets with minimsl or no losses...
• in position to destroy his critical mining starbases and remove defenders from planets I want to take from the opponent in the same turn I'll start the war.
• When I also have troop transports in range to take those planets in the turn I attack.
• When lots of my troop transports is en-route to his empire so I'm going to take most of it in following few turns, when he's still weak from my initial blow and doesn't have proper tech to counter my warships, and
• warships from at least one of his neighbours I paid to go to war with him...   

then it's the time ripe to start a war.

BR,  Iztok

I actually wait for the first one in the next part of the branch.

 Usually its the AI that decides when to go to war with me; at least for my first and second ones. After that I'm big enough to choose. I'll start one, not based on what weapons i have but the size of my force and how quickly i can get rid of the AI space faring ships. SO when i have enough fleets to cover certain areas I'll declare war. The UP vote making ships return to their borders is a hlp since it will lump all of the AI fleets in the same general area.

It will also depend on how powerful the AI military is. Its funny how I'll never feel strong enough and then I'll win a war without taking any loses and mostly take no damage at all.

I just don't even use the military rating or ranking to make the determination. The way its calculated makes the AI military look much worse than it really is. You can be dead last and beat the #1 military if you have it set up right.

LOL I actually mean "Worse to deal with". But i definitely see how my statement would be consider confusing.

When playing the Alterians (which I usually do) and going the 'good' route, they get some great 'special' defenses, such as dynamic shields, arnorian armor, and a similar one before point defense, which give some good overall defense values. Sticking 1 of each on your ships is usually enough to counter almost anything in mid game.

Going evil, as I did with the Terrans in my current game, they don't have anything of the sort, so I'm pretty much stacking all of 1 armor type on. Although at this point it would probably only take 10 turns or so to research the other defenses up to a similar level.

As far as when to go to war: After the colony rush, I go on a Constructor rush. I never colonize anything class 7 or lower, since those planets can be flipped later anyways, and it puts to much pressure on economy to do so. After the constructor rush, usually my economy is beginning to pick up and I may be breaking even by then, I will keep some planets building constructors to get resource mines up to max, but I start building defensive ships on my planets. I usually keep a tiny-hulled craft and a small-hulled defender at each planet. Planets that are in 'dangerous positions' I will keep more. Once defenders are in place, I will start building offensive military and transports. By this time, usually someone has declared war on me. If they have not, I will usually declare war on either some weak civ, or I will try to get others (and myself) all to go to war with the most powerful civ (if they appear to be massively ahead).