Hey,
After so many game played and a pending AAR (still to adicted to stop to write) I decided to make a smaller post, with my strategy directives during my games, developed after so many games and dead end situations.
On the first post I plan just to name them, and later I plan to explain each topic, one by one. Please fell free to comment
The red parts on my posts are editing, as I play the game and realize new or different things for the posted hints.
THIS IS JUST A SUMMARY
1-Reputation is life
2-Civilian maintenance is life
3-Fuel consumption is life
4-General fleet cost is life
5-Keep an eye at war weariness
6-Resort bases are life
7-Trade is life
8-Luxury goods are life
9-Charge resupply ships only at gas clouds
10-Fuel cells are life
11-Rush for colony modules higher tech lvls
12-Patrol fleet is life, avoid your ships from getting blew up
13-Carefull with the Boskaras and the Dhayut
They can stay on a war forever and rarely their empires shatter from bad reputation
14-During peace time, automate your troop transports
15-Trade techs for money
16-Build monitor stations
17-Place high lvl hospitals and recreation centers on your spaceports (any size)
18-Seize independent worlds
19-Go for Way Darkness / Way of ancientes govs
20-Start up hints
Just to remember that I might remember more hints and add them by editing this post
Kadrush´s Strategy tips
RE: Kadrush´s Strategy tips
1- Reputation is life
Always make an effort to keep your reputation high
Why?
a-Higher hapiness
b-Higher tax income
c-War weariness takes longer to menace your empire
d-Reduces the chances of diplomatic issues, meaning negative relations that can end on sanctions, blockades and ever war
e-Greatly reduces the chances of civil war and fleet defections
How?
a-Take out pirate bases
b-Give gifts
c-Make treaties
d-Dont orbital bomb planets
e-Dont use world destroyers
f-Dont make mutual defense treaties = if you dont help your ally you take a rep hit
g-Trade techs for money and other techs
h-Avoid invading independent colonies, use good sense, how much do you need that colony? Is it friendly? Is there any AI player close to it
i-Avoid going to war from nothing, if you want to go to war, first break any treaties, then contact an enemy of your target and offer to attack him for a price. It reduces the rep hit.
More hints to come!!!
Always make an effort to keep your reputation high
Why?
a-Higher hapiness
b-Higher tax income
c-War weariness takes longer to menace your empire
d-Reduces the chances of diplomatic issues, meaning negative relations that can end on sanctions, blockades and ever war
e-Greatly reduces the chances of civil war and fleet defections
How?
a-Take out pirate bases
b-Give gifts
c-Make treaties
d-Dont orbital bomb planets
e-Dont use world destroyers
f-Dont make mutual defense treaties = if you dont help your ally you take a rep hit
g-Trade techs for money and other techs
h-Avoid invading independent colonies, use good sense, how much do you need that colony? Is it friendly? Is there any AI player close to it
i-Avoid going to war from nothing, if you want to go to war, first break any treaties, then contact an enemy of your target and offer to attack him for a price. It reduces the rep hit.
More hints to come!!!
RE: Kadrush´s Strategy tips
2-Civilian costs and maintenance is life
Always make an effort to keep the civilian ships cheap and with low maintenance costs
Why?
a-You civilian economy can only sustain a limited number of civilian ships, if you make them expensive your economy will not be able to sustain many and your empire will suffer from lack of goods, specially deep space construction projects
b-Expensive, heavy defended, huge cargo cap ships commonly dont use all their cargo space, meaning that you loose in dinamic by having such ships. I recomend 20-25 speed freighters, with 1-2 shields and 3-12 cargo holds. Avoid placing acessories such as repair bots, cloaking devides, weapons, ecm.
c-If you colonize heavy you are going to need a lot, really a lot of ships and will have a very low gdp to sustain the demand, therefore your freighters must be cheap.
d-Your main source of civilian expenses is your ships, keep an eye at their costs, since you cant refrofit your civilian fleet. Dont make huge and very expensive civilian mining/gas stations, since they also cost to mantain, altough much less than your ships, remember that more expensive means more resources and longer time to build = slower economy.
e-Dont, I say dont, make expensive, huge passenger capacity transports. I tried that 2 times in an attempt to allow more people to be moved in 1 trip (colonists and tourists). DIDNT WORKED. My huge ships took a lot long to get their passenger, and still the civilian economy asked for the same number and I got 2 bad consequences:
I-Created huge traffic jams on my heavyly populated planets, as they get passengers docking direct to the planet, sometimes more than 150 ships waiting to dock!!!
II-Greatly increased my civilian fleet costs, not worthy as my ships were stuck at the orbital traffic jams.
How?
a-Remove weapons and acessories from the freighters, keep only the basic as mentioned above.
b-Give a set of 4 shield + 4 mason + 2 torpedoes (if possible) to your civilian stations, makes a huge difference against pirates and buy your station time until your patrol fleet arrives.
3-Fuel consumption is life
Always try to reduce the fuel consumption of your ships, by giving more eff reactors and more/bigger fuel cells (meaning less trips just to refuel)
Research hydrogen reactors ASAP
Make your military fleet independent of civilian fuel production
Why?
a-AI tend to overuse carslon reactors which usually cause a huge raise on its price by mid game, by researching hydrogen reactors and giving them, specially to your civilian ships, you reduce your dependency on such fuel (hydrogen never gave me any problem of overpricing).
b-Fuel expenses increases your global maintenance costs and can cripple your civilian/state economy if not attended to.
c-It is really annoying and not strategic to hunt over your worlds for a carslon/hydrogen stash. Takes time that you might not have if you are being invaded.
How?
a-Retrofit your military fleet, even patrol automated ships, to hydrogen reactors by mid-game.
b-Control the number of reactors on your ships/bases, balance with the number of engines and sprint/hyperdrive consumption. Only place an extra reactor if it is really necessary. Always make an effort to keep your excess energy on the same lvl of your maximum weapons consumption.
c-Build resupply ships and leave them stocking on gas clouds, rename them accordingly. Build starbases with extractors, many docks and huge cargo cap on clouds, don’t place a trade center on it (in order not to call civilian ships to it, which takes it cargos and might pinpoint the base location to the enemy).
(edit)d- Today I was able to create both a caslon and a hydrogen crisis, oddly the solution was quite unortodox. When I tried to ressuply my fleets at my gas cloud supply base (5 gas extractors) I realised that even not having a commerce center my ships were going there to refuel and to transport fuel to my colonies. Therefore I copy the design to a civilian gas mining base, raised the number of extractors to 20, the cargo cap to 100k, added a commerce cente, built a lot of them on caslon and hydrogen clouds and voila a cash making machinem incredible, with 100k of caslon and hydrogen on stock on such bases and still the AI empires and my tranports got them all reserved, simply incredible. Until I can normalize the fuel situation my offensives are going to be halted. Just sad.
More hints to come!!!
Always make an effort to keep the civilian ships cheap and with low maintenance costs
Why?
a-You civilian economy can only sustain a limited number of civilian ships, if you make them expensive your economy will not be able to sustain many and your empire will suffer from lack of goods, specially deep space construction projects
b-Expensive, heavy defended, huge cargo cap ships commonly dont use all their cargo space, meaning that you loose in dinamic by having such ships. I recomend 20-25 speed freighters, with 1-2 shields and 3-12 cargo holds. Avoid placing acessories such as repair bots, cloaking devides, weapons, ecm.
c-If you colonize heavy you are going to need a lot, really a lot of ships and will have a very low gdp to sustain the demand, therefore your freighters must be cheap.
d-Your main source of civilian expenses is your ships, keep an eye at their costs, since you cant refrofit your civilian fleet. Dont make huge and very expensive civilian mining/gas stations, since they also cost to mantain, altough much less than your ships, remember that more expensive means more resources and longer time to build = slower economy.
e-Dont, I say dont, make expensive, huge passenger capacity transports. I tried that 2 times in an attempt to allow more people to be moved in 1 trip (colonists and tourists). DIDNT WORKED. My huge ships took a lot long to get their passenger, and still the civilian economy asked for the same number and I got 2 bad consequences:
I-Created huge traffic jams on my heavyly populated planets, as they get passengers docking direct to the planet, sometimes more than 150 ships waiting to dock!!!
II-Greatly increased my civilian fleet costs, not worthy as my ships were stuck at the orbital traffic jams.
How?
a-Remove weapons and acessories from the freighters, keep only the basic as mentioned above.
b-Give a set of 4 shield + 4 mason + 2 torpedoes (if possible) to your civilian stations, makes a huge difference against pirates and buy your station time until your patrol fleet arrives.
3-Fuel consumption is life
Always try to reduce the fuel consumption of your ships, by giving more eff reactors and more/bigger fuel cells (meaning less trips just to refuel)
Research hydrogen reactors ASAP
Make your military fleet independent of civilian fuel production
Why?
a-AI tend to overuse carslon reactors which usually cause a huge raise on its price by mid game, by researching hydrogen reactors and giving them, specially to your civilian ships, you reduce your dependency on such fuel (hydrogen never gave me any problem of overpricing).
b-Fuel expenses increases your global maintenance costs and can cripple your civilian/state economy if not attended to.
c-It is really annoying and not strategic to hunt over your worlds for a carslon/hydrogen stash. Takes time that you might not have if you are being invaded.
How?
a-Retrofit your military fleet, even patrol automated ships, to hydrogen reactors by mid-game.
b-Control the number of reactors on your ships/bases, balance with the number of engines and sprint/hyperdrive consumption. Only place an extra reactor if it is really necessary. Always make an effort to keep your excess energy on the same lvl of your maximum weapons consumption.
c-Build resupply ships and leave them stocking on gas clouds, rename them accordingly. Build starbases with extractors, many docks and huge cargo cap on clouds, don’t place a trade center on it (in order not to call civilian ships to it, which takes it cargos and might pinpoint the base location to the enemy).
(edit)d- Today I was able to create both a caslon and a hydrogen crisis, oddly the solution was quite unortodox. When I tried to ressuply my fleets at my gas cloud supply base (5 gas extractors) I realised that even not having a commerce center my ships were going there to refuel and to transport fuel to my colonies. Therefore I copy the design to a civilian gas mining base, raised the number of extractors to 20, the cargo cap to 100k, added a commerce cente, built a lot of them on caslon and hydrogen clouds and voila a cash making machinem incredible, with 100k of caslon and hydrogen on stock on such bases and still the AI empires and my tranports got them all reserved, simply incredible. Until I can normalize the fuel situation my offensives are going to be halted. Just sad.
More hints to come!!!
RE: Kadrush´s Strategy tips
4-General fleet cost is life
Spend some time taking a look at your empire summary, from there you are going to realize that your main state maintenance costs are spaceports, general base costs and cruiser/capital ship costs, maybe destroyers if you build them a lot.
Why?
After many attempts I realized that a heavy defended spaceport, even a large one, cant hold a large fleet, same goes to monitor stations, research stations and so on.
Also, DW is the first game that incentive the player to build smaller ships, they cost a less to maintain and play a fundamental part in patrolling your space (more ships means that your can cover more space) and lure enemy fire (frigates set to retreat at 50% shields and fight at close range do wonders)
If you pay attention to maintenance costs while building designing your ships/bases you are going to be able to field a larger fleet and spend money gifting and tech rushing, which is essential for your empire development.
How?
Don’t place a lot of junk on your ships/bases, personally I avoid using armor (on escorts, frigates and destroyers I use half the amount of shields employed, on cruisers the same number and on capitals twice the number)
I try to make every size of ship worthy building, meaning escort cost X maintenance = frigates 2x = destroyers 4x = cruisers 8x = capitals 16x (times the cost of maintaining an ordinary escort)
Research and retrofit all your fleet/bases as soon as you develop better command centers and hydrogen reactors (see item 3)
Don’t build defensive bases, or only build very cheap ones, just to hold pirates at bay. Defensive bases are static expensive plataforms that can be lost by a determined fleet and even be aptured with the planet. A planet defended by 3 heavy defensive bases, costs almost the same to maintain of a 16 ships fleet of frigates and escorts. Your fleets can perform an elastic defense (you need monitor bases), and help each other, your defensive bases don’t.
Remove the junk of your spaceports, reduce their armor, shield, weapons, remove the labs (leave the research to specialized stations placed over research bonus areas). I tend to use small spaceports as my main trade workhorse, just raise the cargo cap and docking bay modules to 9, while trying to keep their maintenance cost between 2k to 3k credits. Try to do something similar with the medium and large spaceports, but with more of those modules.
Build cheap starbases, again, remove the junk, as monitor stations shouldn’t cost more than 2k to maintain, since the AI is not used to attack them and you remember to place a stealth module on it.
Double the number of tech modules on your research bases, 8 modules of each type on 1 base cost less than 4 modules on 2 bases, as both bases need the same modules to be built (command center, docking bays). Again, the AI is not used to attack research bases, specially stealth ones.
Keep an eye at your colony ships, not all ships successfully colonize, they start to accumulate and can became a real drain to your state funds.
Don’t overbuild construction ships as they tend to cost a lot to maintain.
More hints to come!!!
Spend some time taking a look at your empire summary, from there you are going to realize that your main state maintenance costs are spaceports, general base costs and cruiser/capital ship costs, maybe destroyers if you build them a lot.
Why?
After many attempts I realized that a heavy defended spaceport, even a large one, cant hold a large fleet, same goes to monitor stations, research stations and so on.
Also, DW is the first game that incentive the player to build smaller ships, they cost a less to maintain and play a fundamental part in patrolling your space (more ships means that your can cover more space) and lure enemy fire (frigates set to retreat at 50% shields and fight at close range do wonders)
If you pay attention to maintenance costs while building designing your ships/bases you are going to be able to field a larger fleet and spend money gifting and tech rushing, which is essential for your empire development.
How?
Don’t place a lot of junk on your ships/bases, personally I avoid using armor (on escorts, frigates and destroyers I use half the amount of shields employed, on cruisers the same number and on capitals twice the number)
I try to make every size of ship worthy building, meaning escort cost X maintenance = frigates 2x = destroyers 4x = cruisers 8x = capitals 16x (times the cost of maintaining an ordinary escort)
Research and retrofit all your fleet/bases as soon as you develop better command centers and hydrogen reactors (see item 3)
Don’t build defensive bases, or only build very cheap ones, just to hold pirates at bay. Defensive bases are static expensive plataforms that can be lost by a determined fleet and even be aptured with the planet. A planet defended by 3 heavy defensive bases, costs almost the same to maintain of a 16 ships fleet of frigates and escorts. Your fleets can perform an elastic defense (you need monitor bases), and help each other, your defensive bases don’t.
Remove the junk of your spaceports, reduce their armor, shield, weapons, remove the labs (leave the research to specialized stations placed over research bonus areas). I tend to use small spaceports as my main trade workhorse, just raise the cargo cap and docking bay modules to 9, while trying to keep their maintenance cost between 2k to 3k credits. Try to do something similar with the medium and large spaceports, but with more of those modules.
Build cheap starbases, again, remove the junk, as monitor stations shouldn’t cost more than 2k to maintain, since the AI is not used to attack them and you remember to place a stealth module on it.
Double the number of tech modules on your research bases, 8 modules of each type on 1 base cost less than 4 modules on 2 bases, as both bases need the same modules to be built (command center, docking bays). Again, the AI is not used to attack research bases, specially stealth ones.
Keep an eye at your colony ships, not all ships successfully colonize, they start to accumulate and can became a real drain to your state funds.
Don’t overbuild construction ships as they tend to cost a lot to maintain.
More hints to come!!!
RE: Kadrush´s Strategy tips
G'day,
Good stuff!
Keep it coming.
Cheers,
Lancer
Good stuff!
Keep it coming.
Cheers,
Lancer
RE: Kadrush´s Strategy tips
Thank you Kadrush !
RE: Kadrush´s Strategy tips
5-Keep an eye at war weariness
Why?
War weariness raise your unhappiness while reduces your tax income.
Also it affects the chances of colony and fleet flipping which added to a bad reputation can easily split your empire in 2 or give that combat fleet to your enemy while it escorts your main invasion fleet, something really not nice.
On the other side, by reducing your tax income you give a break to your private sector allowing it to grow, save money and order new ships.
How?
Wage fast war, prepare before, set strategic aims, go to them and make peace. You don’t need to finish your enemy in only one war. Also subjugation treaties can be profitable as on my last game I used them to pay all my ground troop expenses.
In order to wage fast war you need to plan:
I-Give fuel cells to your ships 4-6 (add more to fuel cells to cruisers and capitals as they spend more fuel, please remember that, as you need to balance, since it is quite annoying to be forced to refuel a whole fleet just because your shinny capital ship spent its fuel tank faster, as it has more reactors and more engines)
II-Build resupply ships and refuel them only at gas clouds (don’t waste their cargo space mining helium, for example). Fill them before going to war, during peace time, bringing them along, close to your fleets, but still on your space, place shields, weapons, engines and order them to run as enemy sighted.
III-Specialize your fleet. Personally I create combat, flanking and assault fleets. Combat the name says for itself. Flanking are multiple (at least 12) small fleets (8-16 ships) with 20 troop cap designed to attack weakly defended planets, avoid bigger fleets and move fast to the next target. Assault fleets have more ships as they need to punch through bases, bigger space ports, maybe a fleet, and carry more troops (minimum 40) to be used on heavily populated/defended planets.
IV-Elastic defend/attack, you got to locate and shoot the enemy fleets (sensors on your spaceports and cheap monitor stations at the frontier, DONT PLACE LONG RANGE SENSORS ON YOUR SHIPS, THE GAME WILL GET DEAD SLOW), if they start to loose the war they are going to guerrilla invade your back colonies forcing your to take fleets from the front, making the war last longer and the weariness to grow. If you locate an enemy fleet moving to your flanking fleets/colonies/ or just hanging around, send nearby fleets to intercept, use Hyperdeny on your cruisers/capitals, join forces as 3-4 flanking fleets can shoot a combat fleet.
V-Don’t invade with multiple troops transports as they need to dock to load troops and that takes time. Personally I create a 20 troops cap big/fast/heavy defended transports to perform my invasions, as the planet falls, only 1 ship has to dock and load troops.
VI-Remove troops comps from all your ships excepted for the troop transport.
VII-Refuel your fleets, load your troops, move to starting positions and only them declare war, not sooner.
Pay attention to your government type, as you can be more or less resistant to war weariness, plan your war accordingly, don’t try to bite more than you can swallow.
Target dumb not war mongering empires, as Teekan and Quameno, easy targets, avoid fighting the Boskaras and the Dhayut, gonna say it again, war with a way of darkness bug or dhayut empire is a death sentence.
More hints to come!!!
Why?
War weariness raise your unhappiness while reduces your tax income.
Also it affects the chances of colony and fleet flipping which added to a bad reputation can easily split your empire in 2 or give that combat fleet to your enemy while it escorts your main invasion fleet, something really not nice.
On the other side, by reducing your tax income you give a break to your private sector allowing it to grow, save money and order new ships.
How?
Wage fast war, prepare before, set strategic aims, go to them and make peace. You don’t need to finish your enemy in only one war. Also subjugation treaties can be profitable as on my last game I used them to pay all my ground troop expenses.
In order to wage fast war you need to plan:
I-Give fuel cells to your ships 4-6 (add more to fuel cells to cruisers and capitals as they spend more fuel, please remember that, as you need to balance, since it is quite annoying to be forced to refuel a whole fleet just because your shinny capital ship spent its fuel tank faster, as it has more reactors and more engines)
II-Build resupply ships and refuel them only at gas clouds (don’t waste their cargo space mining helium, for example). Fill them before going to war, during peace time, bringing them along, close to your fleets, but still on your space, place shields, weapons, engines and order them to run as enemy sighted.
III-Specialize your fleet. Personally I create combat, flanking and assault fleets. Combat the name says for itself. Flanking are multiple (at least 12) small fleets (8-16 ships) with 20 troop cap designed to attack weakly defended planets, avoid bigger fleets and move fast to the next target. Assault fleets have more ships as they need to punch through bases, bigger space ports, maybe a fleet, and carry more troops (minimum 40) to be used on heavily populated/defended planets.
IV-Elastic defend/attack, you got to locate and shoot the enemy fleets (sensors on your spaceports and cheap monitor stations at the frontier, DONT PLACE LONG RANGE SENSORS ON YOUR SHIPS, THE GAME WILL GET DEAD SLOW), if they start to loose the war they are going to guerrilla invade your back colonies forcing your to take fleets from the front, making the war last longer and the weariness to grow. If you locate an enemy fleet moving to your flanking fleets/colonies/ or just hanging around, send nearby fleets to intercept, use Hyperdeny on your cruisers/capitals, join forces as 3-4 flanking fleets can shoot a combat fleet.
V-Don’t invade with multiple troops transports as they need to dock to load troops and that takes time. Personally I create a 20 troops cap big/fast/heavy defended transports to perform my invasions, as the planet falls, only 1 ship has to dock and load troops.
VI-Remove troops comps from all your ships excepted for the troop transport.
VII-Refuel your fleets, load your troops, move to starting positions and only them declare war, not sooner.
Pay attention to your government type, as you can be more or less resistant to war weariness, plan your war accordingly, don’t try to bite more than you can swallow.
Target dumb not war mongering empires, as Teekan and Quameno, easy targets, avoid fighting the Boskaras and the Dhayut, gonna say it again, war with a way of darkness bug or dhayut empire is a death sentence.
More hints to come!!!