Funny idea: Intensive Farming for Defense

Let's say you're playing a large or larger map. Defending your far-flung colonies can be difficult right? They're far away so your spaceships can't reach them in time to defend it against attack.

So instead, just build intensive farms in those colonies. Obviously this works better with super-breeder. Once the pop is high enough, taking those colonies with enough troop transports becomes cost-prohibitive for the AI.

Combine this with starbase fortifications and you don't need spaceships at all. You can just mass colonies and population, and fortified starbases, and laugh at the futile AI attempts to hurt you.

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The typical AI invasions I have experienced are by 3000 size transports.

I generally keep worlds at 13,000 unless they are very small (then 11,000) or very high PQ (then 18,000).

My planets can generally survive one 3,000 transport, but not a second because the planet's population gets reduced to about 5,000 - 6,000 even if my invasion/defense tech is equal or slightly superior to the AIs. At higher difficulty levels, the AI will have a second transport enroute only a couple turns away. In fact, sometimes my planet is invaded two or three times in one turn when the AI has high movement transports.

Even if one has very superior land war tech,+ racial land bonuses + fertility techs + super breeder stuff, the spore ship race would still be a threat.

BTW, star bases no matter how well fortified are helpless once the AIs get fairly far down the tech trees. I never bother with the expense of fortifying star bases but use reaction fleets instead.

The best use of bases is to aid ships, but the AI is blind to that so I don't use that. The one thing I like to use military bases for is to build the mega catapult.

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marigoldran

Join Date 06/2013

+41

I should consider a higher difficulty level.

Still, fortified starbases are pretty much invulnerable in the initial wars, when the AI is mostly on fighters. Put armor on them and they literally don't die.

That way you don't have to put any research into silly things like "lasers" or "missiles" (what are those?). Also, it makes management a lot easier. You don't have to move around several dozen ships/fleets at a time.

Also, if you spam to 50+ colonies, it doesn't matter if you lose one or two to a massive AI invasion fleet. The point is they have to sacrifice several massive transports just to take one destroyed planet. Economically it's worth it.

Maybe it's the difficulty level, but the point is that reaction fleets take up a lot of resources and research to build. Instead, by spending ALL your resources on economy and basic starbase fortification, you have virtually unconquerable planets and starbases for a very long time, while simultaneously booming your econ even more.

Consider: the AI loves building fighters. They also love going after your starbases. So a single econ starbase with maybe 10 constructor worth of improvements (5 econ, 5 defense and fortification) can take out several dozen AI fighters before being destroyed (if ever), which is worth it (since the whole time your starbase is also generating you production). You're basically sacrificing cheap constructors for expensive AI military units.

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Constructors are hardly cheap in the early game, especially when one must include engines to get them to a distant location.

But, yes, time to move up the difficulty level. I find anything less than Suicidal to be boringly predictable.

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