Help: Minor races too powerfull

from Stardock Forums
I'm a rather new player, and i've still got problems when playing at the third difficulty level (Perhaps some of you have some advice concerning that too?)

Anyhow... I've always experienced minor races (often I-league) becoming near all-powerfull compared to me, while i've been much more powerfull that the five main races. In my last game, the I-league had a military rating of about 650, while mine was 150. I had 9 solarsystems (11 planets at an average PQ of 20), while they had 2 systems (3 planets at an average PQ of 20). How is it that they have lots of frigates with 139 HP while my dreadnoughts have only 55 (or something like that) HP? Is this because the minor races are less affected by changes in difficulty levels, or is it something else?

Thanks for any answers
495 views 15 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
You have to research techs that increase the HP of your ships, always you can try to get them to attack the other main races and let them do the dirty work and you win at the end without shooting one allien. ;)
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
DRavisher

The minors have to be accounted for especially in version 1.12. My approach is to be nice, trade with them a lot, and watch your relations improve. Minors usually give you better deals than majors and are usually more useful alive and trading tech or, at sub-masochistic levels, trading cash for tech or trade goods. In other words don't go to war.

If you must go to war, make it quick. Most regular players who use war as policy will launch an alpha strike where you hit all the AI planets at once and prevent retaliation. If you bribe them to go to war first, they often launch their warships out of orbit leaving the defenses compromised. A combination of capital ship (something to beat a battle axe) and combat transports work well but in earlier stages, frigates and transports can also work.

You are also welcome to join the Fellowship of the Ring Empire and discuss issues like this on our empire thread. http://fotr.galciv.org/

Good luck. :)
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I think your guess is correct, that its partly because the minors are less affected by the difficulty level.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Follow this path to Battleship technology.
1. defense theory
2. propulsion theory
3. weapons theory
4. battle armour
5. cold fusion
6. artificial gravity
7. deflectors
8. phasers
9. impulse drive
10. space militarisation
11. shields
12. antimatter
13. energy channeling
14. warp drive
15. interstellar tactics
16. battleship technology

hope this helps a bit.:)

if you want to join a little empire (oh ok. tiny)give me a shout. http://www.galciv.com/metaverse/empires.asp?id=609

best of luck & have some evil fun

RR

ps nice start to your scores. up to you but most people dont post losses as it mucks up your metaverse score.
[Message Edited]
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Becoming an ally to the mino races is one of the best ways to maintain a higher cash flow...... simply being liked by them will garner you trade ships from them alone .... and remember trade also comes in the form of selling techs ... which .. if spaced out right, will gain you fortune and honor ,,,, the ratio of planets to production has alot to do with the single slider Economy .....understanding that is very key to production and research .....in other words it doesnt always make sense all the time ... more planets makes more money yes ,,, but produstion output and so forth also weaken the money surplus... no matter the size of the civ ....soooooooo stabalizing your civ and getting them to work together... quicker than the bots....i personally could not survive without minors :) ...


there are several things that help as a base ... maybe this help >>
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Whoops. I said version 1.12 and I meant version 1.11. You know the one where the minor takes planets in the next sector? The minors in 1.10 and earlier would stay put in one sector but those same minors in 1.11 can move into an adjacent sector now and take away that nearby yellow star you yearned for. :D

Sorry about any confusion. :)
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Notice that in the example, the minor was not any minor, it was the I-League.
There are 2 minors that are often powerful: I-League and Fundamentalists. These can start/get many more planets than most other minors.
As for their ships being powerful, you can dodge them and just bash what's on the planets to alpha strike them. However, the I-League tends to resurrect itself out of nowhere from time to time (if any system decides to defect), so you may not want to declare war on them even if you can alpha strike them to stardust.
Just ignore them if you can, as they are usually not very aggressive, or send them freighters.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
However, the I-League tends to resurrect itself out of nowhere from time to time
End of quote


I believe this bug is fixed.

+ made it so that I League can't turn undead (don't ask)
End of quote



~SDC~
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks for all the feedback. I had not expected so many replies in such a small period of time.

Just a followup question to all of you who have played at the higher difficulty levels. Are the minor races (eg. I-league) less powerfull (compared to the other major civs) at these difficulty settings? As i mentioned at first, the I-league had a military ranking of about 650, while i was largest of the major civs at 150. I did manage to take them out though (how ever did i do that).

And, while i'm posting, could someone give a brief explanation of how my total score in the metaverse i calculated?

Thanks again for all your replies.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
DRavisher

There are lots of helpful folks on this forum who helped to teach me how to play too so thanks to everyone.

As higher levels the minors are relatively less powerful than the majors but the military ranking is all over the place in my experience. For example, in maso, the majors won't trade cash for tech but new minors do. The "old minors" (minors classic?) like Alexians, Carinoids, Scottlingas, Kwilasians (that turn into the I-League)are there at the start of Gigantic (and huge?)games. Minors will provide better trade values than the majors so try trading with the minors before going to the majors. And even though 1.11 allows minors to take yellow stars in more than one sector, like LDC says, it is the I-League and Fundis that are the unusual minor that will obtain 6 to 8 or more stars. There are other "strange minors" (like Dmer) who are terrorists and will poison planets and Draginol (and Dark Lords?) who can start with many capital ships and be tough. There are like 20 or 30 minors all together and one can play a long time befor seeing them all.

The scores are divided into monthly blocks backwards from the latest game played. The metaverse score places your total score in the numerator and the square root of the total games played in the denominator for each monthly block. Each block beyond the current month has a decay factor built in at 5% per month for metaverse score and 10% per month for personal profile (click on name) score. The blocks are then added to derive the listed scores. If I got that correct, kudos to Ray who has explained it 10 times while I am still trying to learn it. :D

Good luck :)
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
The scores are divided into monthly blocks backwards from the latest game played. The metaverse score places your total score in the numerator and the square root of the total games played in the denominator for each monthly block. Each block beyond the current month has a decay factor built in at 5% per month for metaverse score and 10% per month for personal profile (click on name) score. The blocks are then added to derive the listed scores. If I got that correct, kudos to Ray who has explained it 10 times while I am still trying to learn it.
End of quote


That's why now we have it in our Fellowship FAQ. Take a look, DRavisher. http://fotr.galciv.org/faq.htm

~SDC~
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
As higher levels the minors are relatively less powerful than the majors but the military ranking is all over the place in my experience.
End of quote


In spite of this, I've never seen a minor other than the Fundamentalists become an important part of a maso game.
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
Ditto . . . until minors build combat transports beffing them up only serves to weaken the other major AIs starting position, they do seem to hang in there longer these days though which is a good thing!

Also a couple of the starting ones in maso pay good money for tech all of a sudden . . . this has made maso much easier which is a bad thing!

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Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
The I-League just owned the hell out of anyone else in the lategame! They had like 6k military rating (note: 100 or more is good) and noone could send any ship anywhere... Without good enough military bases one simply cannot kill their 3,2k HP Excaliburs!