Basically in less than 5 years i was completely destroyed by... pirates
Did play already few games and this never happened before but wow it really was a challenge!
To summarize relevant settings :
Tiny - 4 other races - pirates to normal - starting setting - basic tecnology
I start the game and from day one i have 3 pirates in my system, i take care of them with my starting ships (manually controlling them).
And from there it was a continous assault on my home planet and newly started colonies.
Turning point was losing my two gas base in my system that in less than a year meant no fuel for my ever increasing number of warships (around 60 by 4 years into the game and no.. they were not enough
)Just checked and there were 10 pirates factions
Lessons learned and some tips:
1) Automatic AI does not know how to deal with multiple threats or very powerful enemy ships.
I had 1 year into the game a pirate cruiser armed with torpodoes and green lasers (whatever they were) showing up.. the ai kept sending in 1-2 escort/frigate at a time that got annihilated in 5 seconds flat. (lost around 10 ships this way in a couple of minutes normal play)
I had to manually put down a flotilla of 10 destroyers to chase it away.
Same thing happened when i usually had pirates attacking with 3 (or more) ships and the ai usually sent only 1 ship at a time.
2) Automatic AI sends military ship escorting costructor/explorer/civilians around when homeworld is under siege.
This is really something to look at.
I had some military ship wasting precious fuel running around the galaxy for no real reason when i had a bunch of pirates in my home system and ongoing battles all over it
3) I had tons of fun with it!
I had to manually try to fix the battles but battling from the very start vs overwhelming odds was fantastic
I just wish the other empires/your automated ship would harass like that all the time....
BTW i know i could pay off the pirate to hold the attacks but i tried to resist it
Going back to play to salvage what i could of this game
