thanks vinicible; do you build an embassy?

Sometimes. Depends on how my situation is with cash.

I sometimes build embassies where I need culture boosts, but mostly I don't. It may help in the initial stage when you have neighbours with big culture to prevent a planet from flipping, and I prefer it to the News Network as the non culture effects are moe interesting.
I don't usually build scouts on medium and smaller. I will use them on bigger maps in order to make contact faster with the ai.

Scouts - Depend on map size. I don't build any on Tiny even Small but on Gigantic I could build 3-4.

Embassy - It's almost at the end of my build queue. I feel the small bonuses are only worth it for its maintenance at the end where numbers are big. The influence helps in my culture flipping as well.

~SDC~

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I have a better feel for embassies and scouts now.

My 5th maso game was very rocky. The Yor made the diplo translators and then the Yor were destroyed before I could afford them - 4 trade goods to swap for diplo translators weren't enough

Then the Dregnin who I bribed to start wars actually starting winning them all and got 5 planets compared to my 2. In spite of keeping everyone at war and some cash-flow from trade, the Drengin got so strong they went through the unambiguous communications plus majesty I,II,III. Having exclusive control of those 4 is similar to diplo translator power and my diplomacy edge from my initial picks vanished. My military was zero (never got to dreadnought) and things were tight. I culture-bombed like crazy but by the endgame my gifts of tech & influence points weren't impressing the Dregnin who were extorting about 2k or so from me every few turns. They went from friendly to hostile really fast in spite of me being their only trading partner with about 4 routes and my bribes no longer were effective. The interface indicated I no longer had any edge in diplomacy. Fortunately I flipped them before I ran out of extortion money but it was way too close. I learned today on maso that if the AI has the lead in planets and all other categories plus the human has no military and no diplomacy edge, then that human better win pretty fast or else. LOL.

Please comment on anything but my main question is, what do maso players do with the military superiority issue? In the beginning I seem to need no military but should one go for dreadnoughts and build AMM to bump military superiority in the mid-game? Or does diplomacy only break down without diplo translators so don't bother with military? Comments on managing military and military superiority issues on maso are appreciated. Thanks.

Just realized you've been playing tiny. I don't get scouts on tiny or small.



Okay. I've seen some disagreement on this. My feeling is that you should only build a military if you're about to use it, otherwise it's just wasted maintanence, especially since the tech pace is so fast that your ships will very quickly be obsolete, and since the AI will almost always be able to outproduce you.

The other comment would be that you sometimes need to enter these wars that you start, when it looks like one of the AIs will become too dominant--since you're playing tiny, taking out a single star system should be enough to shift the balance of power. You can do this even with a vastly inferior fleet, since the AI doesn't defend its worlds adequately--I've taken out enemies with Dreadnaught Technology while using battle hammers--you just have to take the AI by surprise.

Also, you may wish to cease trading techs with the dominant AI, in order to help the other ones keep up.

It was at painful but, Ive taken out Rangers and even an Avatar with my battle hammers. I love em. Its all about controlling military resources, building shipyards etc, and developing them in levels as the battles go on. I aslo find that building battle axes at all planets seems to keep the ai off my back. Might be a little extreme though.

Wiley, you can do that on maso?
I never build a military unless I want to use it. I usually only use AMMs and combat transports.
If I wanted to get a military victory rather than alliance (culture is as tedious as military IMO), I'd build lots of AMMs and exclusively AMMs, combat transports and declare war, take a planet and ask for peace. If you have enough AMMs, your military rating allows you to get peace, you can then regroup, prepare more transports and continue.
AMMs are the best offensive ships because of their slow cost and maintenance. Plus once you've used them, you don't have to pay maintenance.

Seems a bit wasteful for those planets that are defended by loads of defenders and colony ships. I'd always back up my AMMs with a few moderately powerful combat ships.



Drengin tend to be very aggressive when they feel superior. Why only four trade routes? The diplomatic effectiveness of trade depends on the proportion of their income they get from you. If they had a lot of planets bringing in tax, it would have been a very low percentage (one of the icons in the diplomacy screen will tell you how much). You could boost that percentage with trade boosting starbases, although that would have weakened your culture bombing.



~SDC~

I forgot to mention the survey ship and any free ship I got with it (starfighters, corvettes...) are there to get rid of colony ships.
I rarely need more, and there are very rarely battleaxes or lower left when I decide to go to war. Since I'm usually quite far behind in military techs (I never research any of them), the ai tends to defend everything with avatars when I'm starting to go to war.

Alliance victory would certainly be the quickest. I usually get at least one or 2 races to "close" without trying hard. Of course , then I stab them in the back. Muhahahahahaaaa!

LDiCesare,
Im far to attached to my military units to go with AMM's. . I name all of my combat ships so I just cant send the Annihilator to his death. It just seems wrong to waste the Omega on just one ship LOL . See my problem? Im a military freak. I go after all of their ships first in a war. I dont invade until Ive cleaned out the area. I know its ten times harder but thats the way I like it. In just a small game I killed well over a 100 enemy ships. Sadly, doesnt seem to do much for your military score. I dont understand how any of your score is calculated for that matter. It rarely gets the "most powerful ship" listed right.

Yes, teh scoring system is obscure. I think most powerful ship is still the ship with the biggest attack rating (thus I see AMMs very often there).
I think all scores are based on the amount of production you used in the particular area, but I'm not sure.
I understand that you can get fond of ships. I usuallt like my survey ship, but it's rarely strong enough to survive battles from frigate age.

I buried this in a very long Empire thread so thought I should ask here.

I have read some say medium and large maso are the hardest map sizes. They are harder than small/tiny maso because of the need to build scouts delays tech building and the distance makes it take longer to meet AI (including minors). It also seems the tech cost more bc at bigger maps (communications theory cost about 30 instead of about 26 and universal translator cost closer to 20 but about 11 on tiny small for example). At least that is how I see it.

Why aren't huge and gigantic harder than medium/large? It seems to me you just have more of the need for scouts and more distance/time before tech swapping begins. Since I really don't like to play huge & gigantic, I depend on others to help answer that mystery. Thanks.

I agree that medium-sized maps are more difficult than big-sized maps.

That's because the AI is weak at waging long distance wars and it's easier on big maps to "hide" from the AI or to turtle.

AIs on medium sized maps are harder to rush or alpha strike due to the longer distances and the higher number of planets as compared to small sized ones.

~SDC~

On huge/gigantic maps, the ai is too far away from you to cause problems early on. On medium maps, ai is aggressive when you meet them because you don't have the time to set up trade routes with them when they start bullying.
Additionnally, on a gigantic map, you can be at war with someone in the other corner and ignore them entirely. On medium, that's too dangerous.

I don't think scouts change anything to the equation, and personnally almost never build them on any map size (the survey ship finds enough ships to do the scouting it doesn't do itself).

Also the AI doesn't make appropriate diplomatic adjustments to the value of starbases, trade goods, and so on, which are more valuable on larger maps since they affect more star systems.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on map sizes. I understand better now.

The Transport Gambit:
In my last game, I found myself in a desperate situation. Conquest of the Alexians was next on my to-do list and the Drendin were about to beat me to it. My survey ship revealed that not only had the Drendin taken out the defenses but they had three transports that would land in the next turn and they would only need one.

If the Drendin took the planet, the game was over as they already had 3 systems to all the other incredible AIs 1 or 2. Not wanting to lose the game, I offered 6 BC for 100 turns and a junk tech. They accepted and I captured the planet.

This felt like an incredibly cheap price since I could not have rushed a ship for that amount of credits (and it would have been a turn late and 3 sectors away to boot).

I felt there would certainly be other applications, like the war I had started between the Torians and nearly everyone (which had given the Drendins the edge). I flew my Star Fighter next to the remaining Torian planet to discover that it only had 2 transports and a colony ship (and about 16 billion Torians). Note: The Torians had at least 3 Death Knights flying around – but they had also just launched an offensive. For 4 minor techs, I was given both transports. The Star Fighter picked off the colony ship. The first transport used an destructive invasion technique and did a ton of damage leaving only 2 billion Torians (and a lot of Torian sushi). The second transport took the planet. This was almost more surprising than the Alexian situation, because I was surprised that planet bound Transports were loaded when I ‘purchased’ them. Essentially, the Torians had taken themselves out.

I figured I could try this out as a strategy. The Drendin and the Yor had the biggest militaries and they were located a sector apart. I bribed the Drendins to war against the Yor. Thankfully, they eliminated each other fleets – but the Drendin were about to prevail and land their transports on the Yor homeworld when I traded a good number of techs (some like Stellar Cartography and Basic Repair) for their transports. I then eliminated the Yor.

Finally, in clean-up mode, I used this gambit to buy all the remaining Arcean ships (including a pair of combat transports) and invaded their homeworld with their own ships.

Assessment:
This economics of scale makes this very useful on smaller maps, but it good also be useful on larger maps in specific situations. I don’t know how much population is put on purchased transports, but I’d guess they’ll about half full as if you had auto-launched them.

There is a certain satisfaction to having the AI build the transport, grow the population, position the transport, and in some cases, destroy the defenders and then buying the victory for a fraction of the expense and time.

In a certain sick sense, the Torians and the Arceans committed suicide because they didn’t see how the transaction could hurt them. The AI does not place a premium on transports like it does on other ships.

CypherPax, that's a nice trick. The ai is too gullible, alas, as they don't think "what's he going to do with that thing I give him".
I know I will happily destroy a few colony ships in order to settle a planet first and then give techs and money in exchange for peace. I think it would be a fun experiment to see if you could make money out of the trading trick:
Buy a transport, invade a planet, sue for peace, sell the planet back.
???

Ric, did you try trading them a planet in an area you had a huge influence advantage in. The ais will give you tons of techs and even ships for planets, even planets that will soon flip back to you

Essex99

No, I didn't try that. Thanks for the tip. Gotta love this thread. LOL.

Do most maso players play with the AI at default morality? I usually play toward good with AI at pure evil but almost lost a game today to the only major AI left, a pure evil Arcean who got nastier as our morality paths diverged. Please share your thoughts. Thanks.

I tend to leave the ai at default and sometimes randomize the moralities. This usually ends up in Pure Evil Altarians and Pure Good Drengins for some reason.
It's usually easier to get along with the good civs, but they tend to ally themselves together, so 5 good civs would be quite hard to beat.

Every game I've played so far I've left the ais at default setting. Would be very strange for me to have evil Altarians...