But you have to admit, blockading extreme planets is a pretty dismal strategy??

I play with Drengin set to Godlike, the rest on genious (I do this because the Drengin are my favourite 'bad guys' so to speak, and i was getting sick and tired of other races taking them out before i had my chance!) so i know they will be comming for my extreme worlds pretty damb fast, in which case i have to throw everything i've got at blockading, then have nothing available to fend off an attack. The AI is pretty good and pushing a big advantage like that to take me out, so i have no option other than to quit. It may be possible to cat and mouse them for a while, but my technology just isn't happening, so i have no long term prospect for recovery from that situation.

Yes, i can steal worlds out from under the AI, even on suicidal! But i don't play just to beat a high dificulty level, that dousn't interest me, what i like is to foster an environment where i have a powerful AI to test my fleets on!

But as for my original Arcean game, which i have now revisited, The Thalans are a problem because they boarder my territory, and some of my worlds are leaning towards joining them!! They have taken about half the extreme planets in my territory, the ones they did not take were grabbed by other races and then rebelled to my side. So the Thalan extreme worlds inside my territory are certainly not showing any signs at all of rebelling to my side, but i have enough nice worlds anyway, so i'm not so bothered.... plus i have an alliance with the Thalans!! lol

This game is working its way towards a very interesting climax, i think it will become the most interesting game i have ever seen!..... The Drengin just got taken over as the most powerful race by the Korax. This is interesting because i have never before seen the Korax do so well, and their intelligence is only set to genious, while the Drengin are set to Godlike. All the other races are in serious decline except for the Thalans, so like i said, this game is heading somewhare extremely interesting!!!

Interesting? The Korath must have been getting unlucky circumstances in all my games up to this point then? You got me thinking that perhaps the Drengin are not the best race to foster as the ultimate opponent? As for the krynn, i used them a couple of times and they were way to powerful, eating up the whole universe with influence, so i don't use them anymore. I want military powerful, not influence powerful races! Well the Thalans are influence powerful but at least it is not over the top like it is with the Krynn!!

Incidently, one of the toughest opponents i ever faced was a Thalan+Arcean alliance which i just could not crack! The battles raged across the universe and eventually the only way i could gain any ground was to slowly creep forward with military starbase support. But eventually i lost all my trading partners so then i had to run around and steel woulds out from under the AI in order to win, kinda dissapointed i had to resort to doing that..... but my funds would eventually run out and how would i support my army then?

You may have to formulate and execute a different strategy when playing the Arceans.

If they still have that first strike advantage, then do not research defenses, for example.  Just go on the attack earlier with less tech than usual, perhaps.

Thanks for the posts guys,

I'm playing with Drengin set to Godlike and everyone else set to genious.

I restarted the Arcean game back at the original save before the out of memory error stopped me playing the first time. I had made several changes to my strategy.... i realised i already have plenty of ships, but they are no match for the Korath fleets, but thats ok. I repositioned all my crappy ships to defend my starbases and i stopped production of new ships in all my planets. I was previously building allot of constructors but i realise there is no point if i cannot defend my starbases. I have traded skillfully and managed to get HD Spike weapons from the Yor.... i love the Yor, they seem to be the only race willing to trade high end weapons too me!

This is my new strategy in a nutshell - Now i am researching miniturisation and logistics which i was lacking before. So my plan is to upgrade my crappy ships with heavy weaponry as required when the Korath attack. I have stopped spending money on starbases and have now focussed on planitary improvements instead.

Update:

With my earlier mentioned changes in strategy, i did well for a while in that Arcean game, infact i thought it was almost too easy! Even fighting wars on 3 fronts! I have the Korx, the Korath, the drengin and the yor at war with me. But once again Technology is my achillies heel, and as time goes on, my fleets are becomming less and less effective and it is beginning to eat up all my recources just to hold my ground. Soon enough the AI will break me and there is nothing much i can do at all, if i want to advance my weapons tech it will take over 15 turns just for one level of HD Spike. That technology rate is not much use to me at all.

Anyway, i guess i will have to bunker down behind military starbases or just start over, havn't quite decided yet?

A new dismal failure! lol

Got overun again before i can establish any military starbase hardpoints. By the time i realised it was hopeless, i counted the incomming fleets - 19 of them! Talk about overkill!!! lol,  The AI definately didn't want that game to keep going.

Oh well, i'm off to set my race back to Terran.

Yeah, they still have first strike as their Super Ability

I'm kinda surprised that that sounds roughly similar to what I tend to run into on tough/painful.  The Krynn, Korath, and Drengin are the overall strongest (in roughly that order), albeit with the Drengin being somewhat dependent on who they're next to and how much momentum they can build up early on.  The Terrans are about as strong as those three, but have always wound up a close - but clear - second behind at least one of the "top three".

The Yor have got to be the most annoying race thanks to their speed limit

If you build your grand strategy around tech trading, are you not using the basic Terran advantage?

If you want to play a different race with a different intrinsic set of advantages, I would think that you would need to change your grand strategy to better match up to those different advantages.

For example, one of the races (Korx?) has huge trading advantages and get get the trade-based goods early (including Privateer in DA).  It would seem the Korx would use a BC-based strategy of buying what they want.

Some of the other races seem to be structured to attack in early-game wars, the earlier the better.  That is, start attacking and invading even before the Colony Rush is done.  They colonize, you invade.

I am guilty of the same thing.  My preference is to grab a decent bit of space (not more than ~20 - 25 planets), run down the tech tree as I fill my planets, try to keep all the AIs constantly enmeshed in multiple wars among themselves, and only then begin my conquests with my usual victim the first AI unwise enough to declare war on me.  If none declare on me, I determine which will not make an Alliance with me, and go after them.

So, no matter what race I play, I tend to try the same basic approach, but it works best for me as Altairians and I get crushed when I try it as some others on Suicidal.  I have been able to win on a couple levels above Tough playing almost any way - - just research and build and war.

I think tech trading is pretty important to any strategy i use, because at the difficulty level i play at with at least 1 race set to Godlike and the others on Genious, the AI will streak ahead in leaps and bounds. When i get the research rate reports, i'm typically reported to be doing 3 - 5 percent of all the research occuring, even with several planets with research levels up into the thousands!! The AI is a reseach MONSTER on higher difficulty levels. And when i play as Terran, i am usually trading AI techs that are so advanced that in comparison, it makes my own research look like a microbe on a flea, on a dog in a car riding a ferry!

I think tech trading is pretty important to any strategy i use, because at the difficulty level i play at with at least 1 race set to Godlike and the others on Genious, the AI will streak ahead in leaps and bounds. When i get the research rate reports, i'm typically reported to be doing 3 - 5 percent of all the research occuring, even with several planets with research levels up into the thousands!! The AI is a reseach MONSTER on higher difficulty levels. And when i play as Terran, i am usually trading AI techs that are so advanced that in comparison, it makes my own research look like a microbe on a flea, on a dog in a car riding a ferry!

Had a bit of a browser problem resulting in multiple posts?