Shadows Game Strategy
Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2014 4:36 pm
If you like making up your own strategies without help, this is a spoiler alert. Otherwise scroll down to see my message.
I've been playing Shadows for a couple of months now, and I have a strategy that seems to almost always work. It short circuits the game though, so I consider it to be sort of an exploit.
What I do is build about 5 Energy research bases, research Gerax hyperdrive first (after discovering the path), then build a bunch of explorers with as long a range as possible. I manually explore systems just looking for specials. I can do this before any other empires have hyperdrive. I almost always get at least a couple of capital ships and other goodies before anyone else has the tech to build these. I then use them to conquer independents and the nearest empires, who are still usually living inside their own systems or maybe are just getting started. Pirates are a nuisance but if I have enough military ships it's not a problem. I have almost always have conquered some independents and a couple of empires by the time the 20 years is up on the victory conditions timer and I have 80% for the win. Several times I can win at 20 years or at least by 30 years.
Usually the game is just getting started. While it is nice to win, what disappoints is that the other empires seem to be quite slow getting started, many times they are still in their home system when I find them. I am not sure if the pirates are giving them too much trouble or what causes them to develop slowly.
The strategy works but is dull. I could turn off or change the victory conditions to make the game harder. I think I will try some harder settings but I want to ask players with more experience what settings they like to use on the Shadows games. Thinking of switching to normal RoTS since it seems to be better balanced for the enemy empires, although I like the way Shadows starts from ground zero.
I've been playing Shadows for a couple of months now, and I have a strategy that seems to almost always work. It short circuits the game though, so I consider it to be sort of an exploit.
What I do is build about 5 Energy research bases, research Gerax hyperdrive first (after discovering the path), then build a bunch of explorers with as long a range as possible. I manually explore systems just looking for specials. I can do this before any other empires have hyperdrive. I almost always get at least a couple of capital ships and other goodies before anyone else has the tech to build these. I then use them to conquer independents and the nearest empires, who are still usually living inside their own systems or maybe are just getting started. Pirates are a nuisance but if I have enough military ships it's not a problem. I have almost always have conquered some independents and a couple of empires by the time the 20 years is up on the victory conditions timer and I have 80% for the win. Several times I can win at 20 years or at least by 30 years.
Usually the game is just getting started. While it is nice to win, what disappoints is that the other empires seem to be quite slow getting started, many times they are still in their home system when I find them. I am not sure if the pirates are giving them too much trouble or what causes them to develop slowly.
The strategy works but is dull. I could turn off or change the victory conditions to make the game harder. I think I will try some harder settings but I want to ask players with more experience what settings they like to use on the Shadows games. Thinking of switching to normal RoTS since it seems to be better balanced for the enemy empires, although I like the way Shadows starts from ground zero.