Playing the warlord.

[Foraven]

I'm curious to know about how effective it is to play a war mongering empire in DS. From what i know it seem very difficult to stay at war for very long. Trade/tourism seem to be the main sources of income, and they work better if you stay friendly with your neighbors. I did not notice if there was a salvage/bounty system in this game for shooting enemy trade ships or any extra income from freshly captured enemy planets. One thing that is obvious though is that this game has been made so staying at war is crippling so they need to remain short and decisive, which seem hard to pull off unless it's planned well in advance (logistics can be a pain).

So, any warlords in here?

[Bingeling]

I am hardly a warlord. I am a peace loving guy who hope that someone will attack me. I interpret the poor sods who click "yes" when their AI advisor suggests they should start harrying the "enemy" empire's outposts as attacking me. You shoot at my ships, I shoot at you...

It is quite fun when they start shooting up a disputed mining base. My auto ships (destroyer and smaller) arrive, and there will be regular shootouts. When they start annoying me, I move a typical fleet of 4 capitals and 4 cruiser or so, and park them at the mining station. The problem is auto assigned escorts following my civilian ships into their system. They tend to die, and it is time for war. The fun AI are the ones that give me this treatment while they keep asking for mutual defense pact...

I believe the main problem for a warlord is the population being tired of wars. Though, I am sure having everyone else at war with you can give trouble too. However, the AI loves to declare war if your reputation is low, but they are not so eager to send fleets to attack.

I did the "huge central empire, multiple smalls around" quick start, and started small on the crowded side of the ring. The big Securan central empire typically always had someone to be at war with, and split at least two times, with the new ones sometimes splitting too, giving 5 large empires instead of one incredibly huge one. Even after conquering another decent empire, I was not up to size of the five different remnants of the original boss.

So, what I think is. Find a good time to get aggressive. Being aggressive and dead is not fun. Don't be in eternal long wars, if opposition is huge, grab his most valuable colonies, and any other large colonies in same system, and make peace. If necessary, bribe for peace once in a while to have the population calm down.

If you don't make peace, I think you would be like the huge empire in the quick start. You gain colonies at the front of your empire through warfare, and lose huge chunks at at time as you shed empires from the back...

[WoodMan]

Probably Boskara Hivemind would be a good choice for you Foraven.  You got your +10% approval (raise the taxes) for peace times which along with the -25% troop maintenance should allow you to build up a decent invasion force before declaring war.  The Shaktur Firestorm Torpedo should help in taking out the low tech spaceports the enemy will have in the early game (especially if you have tech on very slow like do) so your troops might be able to get their homeplanet, once thats done, they should be ready to surrender so you can go back to making money and preparing for the next war, the rest of their Empire will be no threat after you got their homeworld, so you can come back for them later [:D]

Also, a Boskara Hivemind should have -110% war weariness, but, staying at war for a long time is not a good idea anyway, so you shouldn't need to rely on it.

Also, for early invasion look out for passive/stupid races their designs aren't as good, for example the Teekan have no weapons on the Spaceports, so there planets are easy to steal, unless they build plenty of defence bases, so if you find Teekan early game, get in there before they get those weapon platforms up, also their warships suck compared to Boskara.

[adecoy95]

war mongering can get you a very large empire quickly, using troop transports you can rush an enemy homeworld, completely crippling him.

just dont wait too long, i have seen homeworlds with around 25 troops on them [:D]

[torrenal]

I've seen worlds with over 40 troops on them...

Really, the trick to invasions of large empires is taking well populated planets (taxes = candy) with few defending troops (baby). Troops arn't cheap, so they arn't going to keep 20 troops on every planet.

If they have low population, don't bother, unless you have troops to spare, or the location is key (Ooh, base in the middle of their empire, ON a caslon bearing planet... must have). If they have high troops, once you take away their other income sources they will have decided problems funding efforts to resist you, what with their multiple armies to pay upkeep on and nothing to make money with, so there is actually some merit in leaving such planets alone.

Really, it's the high population planets you need to worry about when taking out a large empire. They can build stations quickly (anything over 1 billion has a construction speed of 400), and they can build colony ships (Hang on... I took over all his planets... why is he still in the diplomacy screen?)
//Torrenal