Friendly Challenge

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Darkspire
They did, you have a checkbox to disable it [:)]

There is absolutely no need to trade tech in DW, all it serves to do is increase cash, the rep + is not really worth mentioning, cash is really not needed at all unless you really are in a tight spot.
For tech trading to be worth bothering with it needs a total rethink and a new diplomacy system, good luck with that. Best game for an example is the GalCiv series, the tech trading, treaties etc in the diplomacy screen are a game unto themselves with the other empires. The DW diplomacy model is pretty flat and lifeless really, gave up with it moons ago as it was never likely to get better, shame but as the saying goes 'you can't have your cake and eat it', more fun to send off intelligence agents to try and get the tech or see what you can find on captured ships.

Darkspire

While I also enjoy GalCiv and would like to see far better system in DW2, as you know from when I joined the forum, my view is if it's in the game then it should have some degree of balance. There is a quick fix ... reduce prices by a factor of 5-10. As the difficulty increases, increase the disparity between buy and sale prices for the human player.

[robske]

Haven't played DW for some time. Something to do with X Rebirth, KSP and Prison Architect. But Since the new update I was thinking of having another game. I stumbled yesterday on your thread and I started a game right as I woke up. Just finished it. See the imgur gallery linked below for the screenshots I took while playing this round.

Tech trading was disabled btw.

http://imgur.com/a/b7VX3

[Icemania]

Glad to inspire a game robske.

What strategy would you change in the next round? This is the real purpose of this thread.

In the early game the best way to increase revenue is to focus on your homeworld as Colonies are a drain on limited resources.

1. Looks like you could increase taxes a little on your homeworld. I normally set to tax to align with +2 happiness and monitor happiness to ensure it stays positive.
2. Once I have about 100k or so I set tax to 0% for a while to increase homeworld population.
3. Rather than investing early in Colonisation you may want to consider Advanced Medicomplex (+100% to population growth) before Ruslan Technology Installation. You may also want to consider Traders Bazaar (+30% colony income).

[robske]

1. Yes.
2. Good idea.
3. Also nice.

Things I'd do differently next time:
1. Focus on troop transports instead of colonization.
2. Rush up gerax hyperdrive.
3. Design my empire a little bit differently.
4. The things you mentioned above.

Things I consider i did well:
1. Keep protection agreements with the pirates so I had almost no military.
2. Diplomacy.
3. My FTL eco.

I am gonna run another game today An interesting challenge which triggers you to optimize your early game

[robske]

Did a rerun:

http://imgur.com/a/5CxEM

Did quite a lot better

[Icemania]

Some great improvements there robske.

Some more strategic thoughts:

1. At the start, consider building the Energy Research Base before the Small Spaceport i.e. to get research going a little quicker.
2. With Energy Research, consider doing the two first Construction technologies earlier, due to the magnitude of benefit in what you can build.
3. Looks like you haven't found Way of the Ancients at 2130. The benefits of this Government time are huge, but to find it early, you'll need a much larger exploration fleet (and there are plenty of other goodies around).
4. There are still a lot of Pirate bases in the local area at 2130. Along the way (after a large exploration fleet is mobilised and usually as soon as I have Deucalios Shields and Shockwave Torpedoes available) consider building Pirate Extermination Fleets whose focus is destroying Pirate bases. The second wave normally has an Explorer in the fleet with a Long Range Scanner so you never run out of targets. I always clear the local area but these days I'm more careful to leave Pirates alone at long range since they will be needed to help recover reputation for future invasions.
5. And the real challenge to get your score up ... taking over enemy homeworlds!

I wonder which race is best for this challenge? I'm not sure I can go past Quameno as the research times are much faster, but haven't played these settings with many other races yet ...

[robske]

Teekans have OP eco as far as I was concerned. Integrating humans and kiadians provided good advantages.

My strategy was to skip colo techs all over and go capture indep colonies. I used the ancient guardians to keep my planets clean of corrupting influences by barbarians (or pirates if you will). So the ancients actually acted as my meatshield. I didn't have a real offensive military till one pirate faction started being capable of wiping the floor with ancient fleets. But that was by 2128.

About the pirate bases, yes. But I didn't have many protection agreements due to the ancient guardians keeping most of my space clean for no cost.

Also another thing of the teekans to consider is the bonus on civilian ship sizes. This provided huge benefits in trade. I could have a -60k cashflow while still keeping earning money. This proved very benifical for slapping my homeworld up to max pop in short time due to be able to hold 0% tax for extended periods.

Torpedos are usually my choice for base and capship busting fleets. My destroyers are generally outfitted with them. My escorts used 4x concussion missiles as weapons. The frigates same as the escorts, but with heavier shields added.

In my usual games, escorts have high speed, low defense and long range weapons. Kiting ships. Frigates hold some long range weapons and some close range weapons and an ion blaster added in for fun's sake.

Destroyers are usually the mainstay ships in fleets used for base and planet busting. They come equipped with torps, 2 troop bays, proximity array, about 800 shield points and an ion cannon. The cruisers are usually used as fleet command ships, and house hyperdeny equipment, 1500 hitpoints shields and a lot of long and close range weaponry. They are most often used to wipe enemy fleets to the floor and to attack large spaceports with defense bases.

In this game, I think I did really well. Even while it was for a long time a neck to neck race with the boskarans. They didn't rise much really, but I had to make sure I was keeping my empire expanding in population, colonies and economy. I think outside my homeworld the other colonies ran on 0% tax.

[Icemania]

Full credit to you for increasing your score to 215k. I'm surprised that was a winning score, normally there are more than a few empires in the range 400k-600k by 2130. Getting 600k is an achievable target.

As Teekan are strong with economy keep in mind that Quameno are OP with research. In my last game Gerax was available in 2108 and Advanced Medicomplex construction was finished in 2110 (with tech trading disabled). That said, I'll have to try a Teekan game. Gizurean also looks tempting for a fast expansion game.

You mentioned both Torpedoes and Missiles, each take effort to research, there is a lot of benefit in focusing on one weapon technology in a limited time frame.

I have no permanent protection agreements, they are all temporary.

[robske]

Torpedoes were introduced by 2127. All the time before my most used weapons were based on missiles.

A mention of fun though: Even though my fleets were capable of wiping an enemy pirate base off the map in 2128, they were incapable of killing 2 600-hitpoints kaltors. Even if they had 20 ships stuck into a fleet.

[Canute0]

kaltors need a different tactic to fight then a base who don't run around and eat your components through shields.

[robske]

I know. I just ran a game past night. Likely some pirates triggered silvermist very early on (somewhere in the first 5 years). Now a large portion of the universe is devoid of live. Eaten by silvermist. And a huge swarm is coming my way. Doesn't look good.

Not to mention that the Eruktah refugees have just appeared.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Icemania
Without technology selling my score was only about 600,000 in 2130.

You my friend ... are a pussy. Yes, a pussy.

There are a few strategies you have obviously missed as I've managed a score of 1.32M with more than 5 years to spare.

Toughen up Princess.

Regards,
Bad Icemania

[robske]

Wow!

[Spidey]

So what did you do to get there, Ice? Massive scout spam early on, followed by mass invasions to sit on the indies as well as the homeworlds of other factions, combined with early access to WotA and pirates directing their early attention on someone else?

You can't just dangle that picture in front of us, tell us that there are strategies, and then not say anything else. [:)]

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Spidey
So what did you do to get there, Ice? Massive scout spam early on, followed by mass invasions to sit on the indies as well as the homeworlds of other factions, combined with early access to WotA and pirates directing their early attention on someone else?

You can't just dangle that picture in front of us, tell us that there are strategies, and then not say anything else. [:)]

Fully agree Spidey, this is intended as a Strategy thread.

Much of the strategy was getting used to the changes from the latest patch and getting the timing right.

As usual I kept a High Priority on High Tech Research (and even higher priority after Gerax Hyperdrive which was the early focus) to enable building Advanced Medicomplex for the 100% growth bonus as soon as possible (particularly since Quameno have slow population growth). Between 2110 and 2117 I had 0% tax on my homeworld to reach maximum population. Traders Bazaar was also built in time for 2117. By 2124 I also had all the Research Wonders and Holographic Network built with research well underway for the Empire bonus Wonders.

Yes scout spam is always essential but inspired by sbach2o I decided to play this game with 100% move-to and checking every few game days (as the target is explored well before the move-to command completes) so that command re-issue can be optimised. This was very micro-intensive but it meant that I had Way of the Ancients and 3 Super Luxury Mines running by 2113. Between 2110 and 2117 my Empire was funded primarily by Super Luxuries (early I had some savings to draw on).

Normally I start invading independents as soon as I have the technology but as the drain on early game resources is immense (defence ships, troops, temporary protection agreements) this approach can quickly put a halt to the 0% growth phase. This time I waited until I had sufficient income from the Super Luxuries so the first invasion was not until 2111. By 2116 I had 16 Colonies with defences all funded by Super Luxuries. Only the troops/ships/bases needed (a zero excess focus) were produced during this time. Reputation recovery took some time as the technology and resources to destroy Pirate bases came later in this period.

Once 2117 came around I had plenty of homeworld income. With the increases in enemy empire homeworld troop strength in recent patches I had falsely convinced myself that a space fleet was needed to dominate first due to the space control bonus to ground combat. This time around I built Armoured Factories on almost every world and spammed ground forces from 2117. Between 2121 and 2124 three homeworlds were conquered using sneaky troop transports (with 3 times the strength of the ground army to counter the fact they have space control, sometimes land more troops, and have a large population bonus). For two of the three homeworlds I targeted empires which still only had 1 world so when they were conquered I received all of their assets. Reputation recovery was trivial via the usual focus on destroying Pirate bases.

Also consider how much influence the military element has on overall Score. I normally don't build spaceports with a firepower of 4,320 at this stage of the game! There was a lot of crash research with Torpedoes when I had the funds available so Plasma Thunderbolt research finished in 2121.

As a final note I am not sure how this score could be achieved with any other race. Feel free to prove me wrong!

[Icemania]

Here is how that game ended up (another homeworld later and with some consolidation).

[Spidey]

I don't even want to have nightmares about the micro needed for 100% move to plus weekly updates on scouts in a 1400 system game. Holy hell. I'm having shivers just from reading it. That's some serious dedication.

As for the other things, it makes sense. Find stuff first so you can sit on it first. Prioritize exploration and wonder grabbing along with growth. But I do have one question. How do you avoid a hugely fractured empire with a few mines here, a few mines there, a huge territory to protect, and no central shape connecting everything? Did you manage to colonize all the empty space between the super luxuries and other homeworlds or did you just race outwards and then worried about filling in the empty holes later? If so, how did you avoid getting buggered by pirates time and again?

[Canute0]

You don't need that much mines.
Just be sure your homeworld got all nessesary resources mines around. Design your mining station that they can stand against 2-3 pirate ships alone.
Don't create colonies, so you don't need to defend them, since they prolly don't give you profit until the games end.

Icemania capture other homeworld, you capture their resources too, that should be enough resources to build defence bases + more cash income.

Just a question to Icemania, did you capture the other homeworld with sneak attacks or did you declare war before ?

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Spidey
But I do have one question. How do you avoid a hugely fractured empire with a few mines here, a few mines there, a huge territory to protect, and no central shape connecting everything? Did you manage to colonize all the empty space between the super luxuries and other homeworlds or did you just race outwards and then worried about filling in the empty holes later? If so, how did you avoid getting buggered by pirates time and again?

No Colonisation technology was researched or used (well except for a colony ship or two found during exploration). The Independents conquered were the strongest nearby ones so my territory was close to continuous.

Until 2117 I focused on defence but as soon as my homeworld hit maximum population I built 5 Pirate Base Extermination Fleets who were on constant base destruction duty so the pirate attacks dropped off continuously from that point onwards.

As Canute says you don't really need a large number of mines. Before invading homeworlds I had less than 30. I also try to group them to only a few nearby systems to make them as defensible as possible. Each system had 4 max size defence ships. Temporary protection agreements were used when necessary. As soon as the Super Luxuries were discovered I sent a construction ship with a 4 ship escort. After I had Plasma Thunderbolt in 2121 those defence ships weren't really needed. Spaceports with 4320 firepower made for rather short battles!

ORIGINAL: Canute
Just a question to Icemania, did you capture the other homeworld with sneak attacks or did you declare war before ?

Sneak attacks. Quameno victory conditions penalise you if you declare war.

[Darkspire]

Sneak attacks. Quameno victory conditions penalise you if you declare war.

Not only has he given up cutting the legs off the horse he has now fitted it with roller skates ... [:D]

Darkspire