Extreme Difficulty Shadows After Action Report

[Icemania]

Run away, cowardly Pirates! If they had all attacked at once ...

[Icemania]

Destroying Pirates structures on last Pirate Colony (at the moment).

"No Enemy Targets" left with Ultra Long Range Scanners dotted all around the map i.e. All Pirate Bases destroyed.

Most Pirates have less than 10 Military Ships left.

[Icemania]

Final Victory! It could have come earlier if I'd invaded more Empires but Victory it is only really Victory if almost all of the Pirates are history ...

[Icemania]

Lots of relatively peaceful Empire Action, next to zero Pirate Action ... mainly a few ships with nowhere to go ...

[Plant]

Interesting to see a more strategically focused AAR than a narrative focused one.
Quite a few lucky early breaks you had in game as well.
How do you normally deal with that conquering one homeworld is usually enough to be on the way to fulfilling the victory conditions?

[Icemania]

Thanks Plant. I'm much more interested in discussions that improve Strategies than Narratives.

Definitely some lucky breaks early in this game. In the previous game at these settings I had no luck at all and finished 2140 rather than 2137. In another game I had an Ultra Genius and the Teekans as nearest homeworld, I think that was more like 2135. Not that I normally actually finish many games, as soon it gets close to victory I normally check-out.

I think the issue with conquering another homeworld is how the AI in Distant Worlds makes it so ridiculously easy. If I was really focused on winning ASAP I could have finished much earlier than 2137. I simply would have done the same to the next two homeworlds as soon as I could have.

Firstly, they should have a much larger army on their homeworlds, particularly on the harder settings, where the AI can easily afford it. Probably 3-5 times bigger on Extreme. This is something that could be patched fairly easily ... Erik?

Secondly, at the point I invaded the Naxillians (noting there is no Mutual Defence Pact between us) ... if somebody sent a bunch of troops transports to my home system, I would send a warning (if you could that is) and then if that was ignored, blow them out of the sky before they could land their troops.

Out of interest, Strategically, what would you do differently?

[Plant]

I think playing with an excellent homeworld makes the homeworlds more of a focus than normal.

Do AI empires try to produce army or ship numbers according to income and reserve cash? I'm not even sure that they do so.
Perhaps population size should have a defensive greater effect, or a bonus to defence in capital planets.

Strategically, I would make 2 starting explorers, make less explorers in general and not obsess so much about hunting down every pirate in the galaxy, but I guess if you have an available navy, you might as well have a bit of fun hunting them all down.

I also don't change the mining bases designs, but that is a personal gaming preference.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Plant
Strategically, I would make 2 starting explorers, make less explorers in general and not obsess so much about hunting down every pirate in the galaxy, but I guess if you have an available navy, you might as well have a bit of fun hunting them all down.

Less Explorers represents a significant strategic handicap post Gerax Hyperdrive e.g. less chance of findings some of the more lucrative ruins like Way of the Ancients, Colony Ships (which open up other further Colonisation options), Super Luxuries (lot of $'s), or getting construction going in Debris Fields (tech boost) etc. I find Exploration fun.

With hunting down all Pirates the idea was to get to a quiet galaxy again, and partly to show those that seem to think that Pirates are tough that they can easily be overcome. In theory, I could then start to downgrade the level of defence on bases, to improve the economy, but the economy is already booming (5 of 6 Super Luxuries helps). Funnily enough, once the galaxy was quiet and it became an Empire game, it wasn't long before I stopped playing, because Empires are just too easy.

ORIGINAL: Plant
I also don't change the mining bases designs, but that is a personal gaming preference.

Fair enough ... a big strategic handicap though.

ORIGINAL: Plant
I think playing with an excellent homeworld makes the homeworlds more of a focus than normal.

Yes but they are strategically important anyway. Even when I play on a harsh homeworld start for a more challenging game I always feel like the AI needs an excellent start. Homeworlds should be tougher to conquer, a lot tougher (or any heavily populated planet).

ORIGINAL: Plant
Do AI empires try to produce army or ship numbers according to income and reserve cash? I'm not even sure that they do so.
Perhaps population size should have a defensive greater effect, or a bonus to defence in capital planets.

It seems pretty apparent they don't use their available cash properly from how game breaking technology selling can be on Extreme, how few troops they have on their homeworlds etc.

[Icemania]

Wow ... just played a game as Quameno Technocracy and spawned an Ultra Genius Scientist and also an Energy Research Scientist with a huge bonus at the start of the game. The milestone dates in this AAR were massively slow compared to that!

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Icemania
Firstly, they should have a much larger army on their homeworlds, particularly on the harder settings, where the AI can easily afford it. Probably 3-5 times bigger on Extreme. This is something that could be patched fairly easily ... Erik?

I'll see what we can do. [8D]

[Darkspire]

Firstly, they should have a much larger army on their homeworlds, particularly on the harder settings, where the AI can easily afford it. Probably 3-5 times bigger on Extreme. This is something that could be patched fairly easily ... Erik?

I have fleets of 5 transports maxed out on tech that can carry 10K, they make mincemeat of the colonies when they attack so thought it might be an idea to change the policy files. I edited all the policy files and upped the amount of troops for the races. Doesn't seem to have made much difference though, I put in a minimum of 15 and they still seem to be quite weak in troop numbers so hopefully a tweak in the next update might help, until then I shall make a few more adjustments to see if I can alter it from the policy files, I will try for 20 then 25 to see if that helps although IIRC the troop numbers are determined by the colonies cash flow, if they have the cash and are not using it then it really does need a tweak.

Darkspire

[Icemania]

Thanks guys. And I'm also looking forward to the 1.9.0.9 changes to reduce the bonuses on Wonders.

[FireLion1983]

At first I was like, "Excellent Homeworld, what a copout!" But after playing on Extreme difficulty I'm not exactly finding it fun taking the first 100 years of the game just to build population so I can get out of the red after building 1 ship. Gonna try this out, and hopefully the game will still provide a challenge while not crushing me too badly at the start.

[Icemania]

Yes these are what I consider to be "fun" settings although you should also exploits like technology selling. There are some other threads around where I discuss other settings and the need for vastly improved AI in DW2 ... [;)]

Additional homeworld troops were added in one of the patches which was good.