Runaway Race – Strategy Needed

[Bellrock]

I have played a number of games (restarts) of Distant Worlds 2, and I’m consistently seeing a runaway race in each game. The nature of the advantage of this runaway race, is such that per the victory conditions this race advantage is like three times the score of any other race. This runaway race is typically seems to be one of the insectoid races, in my current games it is the Dhayut that is the victor; I typically play Humans. In interesting factoid, is the Dhayut’s in this game have empire population of 2,950,000 million, while the next largest empire is 66,000 million.

I would like to think I’m a competent strategy gamer, and understand the game mechanics of Distant Worlds. I typically am able to check my neighbors, and slowly grow my empire. However, this runaway race is on the other side of the galaxy, and by time our boarders make contact it appears they are the clear victor.

I’m rather curious how others are handling this, and if there is some strategy that I have failed to envision as of yet.

[rustyj]

This happens in many of my games (as human, highest game difficulty). I think it is because the devs have recently nerfed expansion thru colonisation (made it harder), so those races that expand thru conquest seem to do better, on the surface.

You can still win with minimal conquest, till you get to late game, but the devs have made it harder to do so. And a lot of people prefer the excitement of continual conquest even if it means losing the game.

I don't see the runaway race scenario as a negative. I find games where I have ended up ahead by 40% points by mid game to be boring.

So a race might have double my colonies late game, and be at 55+ on the victory score. (I have set my victory conditions to 70% to counter what seems to be happening since the last big update.) In fact I just won a game where I was on 28 and the dominant race was at 67% late game and there was just a handful of races left.

If you look at all the data on the dominant race, you might see some weaknesses. The dominant AI races don't seem to have strong overall fleet strength late game, ie no of fleets x strength of each fleet. Not sure why, whether they can't because the devs have made it that way, or because their research and finances are so bad that they can't afford it.

Despite having a far greater number of colonies, they may not have a much higher research level than you. Their cash situation might not be as strong as it could be - wars are expensive. They may not have the troop numbers either on carriers or on planets, because they have been attrited thru wars.

My strategy, which works for my play style, is to firstly focus on research (eg those factors that boost research - colonies, space ports, research stations, crashing research, diplomacy). I trade the other factions for their research stations. I race to get all the wonders ahead of the other races. And I race to get the '1 only in empire' facilities. I usually get these ahead of the dominant race. Not sure why, but it may be that research is slowed when a race is at war.

Secondly, I don't spend a lot on fleets initially. I buy off all the pirates, and switch them to non-aggression treaties asap. So I don't need fleets to fight pirates. (This is not as expensive as you would think as most pirates are converted in a couple of years). My first warships are destroyers, I don't waste time with escorts and frigates.

To save money, I build just enough fleets to dissuade other races from attacking me thru to mid game. Only if things have gone really bad (I haven't been able to colonise enough planets by saturation point) I might attack a weak race here and there. Here again I focus on grabbing their research facilities. From mid-game on I build fleets to counter or outmatch the dominant race. The AI doesn't seem to target races according to potential, and it usually leaves me alone.

Which bring me to your scenario - late game facing a race with double or more the colonies that I have. I don't bother trying to conquer the smaller races, because during that time the dominant race is still expanding and will achieve victory. The only path open is to declare war on the dominant race and whittle it down. In my games it has been surprisingly easy.

I expand my fleet numbers to outmatch the dominat race. My eventual fleet strength is 10+ times that of the dominant race. 90% of those fleets, set to Defend, comprise just 5 dreadnaughts with stealth tech installed (I've found that less than 5 can get swamped by larger tho weaker fleets). I scatter them throughout my empire to match up against the dominant race's fleets, then forget about them.

I often wait till the race is engaged in a war with another race, before declaring war. Quite often this means their fleets are more vulnerable, engaged in someone's else space, rather than around one of their own well defended planets.

I actively hunt down their invasion fleets using fleets from my battlegroups (see below). As I stated earlier, troops can be a real bottleneck in a war and I find it more expedient to focus on reducing the race's ability to invade over and above my own need to take colonies, at least early in a campaign.

I have 3 Invasion battlegroups each comprising 2 large fleet of 10 dreadnaughts with stealth installed and 10 destroyers, and a troop carrier fleet of 24 ships with largest hulls and with stealth installed. The high no of troop carriers negates the issues of slow planet drops and greatly reduces troop attrition, thus reducing the need for replenishment. Also I only have about 8 troop feeder planets, the rest having just 6-8 units. Much cheaper.

Those battlegroups are invincible and each group could take on the others entire navy. I just leapfrog each group from planet to planet and dismantle the empire. In my last game I had a race with 100+ more colonies than me beg to become a vassal. I accepted but only to replenish my fleets, build space ports and boost research. They declared war again anyway.

It goes without saying that to avoid losing ships while invading or attacking planets, you need to have highest level of shields, buffed 10+ times, against level 3 Ion Cannons. Conversely you should have Level 3 Ion Cannons on all your planets. What happens is that the other faction is losing ships so fast, they avoid going near most planets except for outposts. I generally don't lose a single planet, or if I do, I make sure the faction loses its troop carriers at the planet or at the very least loses its troops when I send an invasion battlegroup to take it back immediately. You'll know your winning when the race starts stripping its colonies of troops to boost its diminishing invasion fleets, making it easier to invade with minimal loss of your own troops.

I make sure the colonies/space I conquer has strategic value, ie is contiguous, or building bridges to more isolated planets. In the conquered space I make sure to take over all mines and facilities. This reduces the likelihood of the race sending fleets into that area, which of course means less space your own fleets have to defend.

[Bellrock]

Thank you for the reply.

To respond to some of your comments. At the point the game where I’m at, is the game has Destroyers as the largest ships, not Dreadnaughts. The Hive has been defeated, or at least addressed, and the end game storyline has not revealed itself. The Dominant race looks to be on a constant war footing with the other AI races, and those races are being steam rolled by this race. At this point the dominant race has something like 40 times the population, three times my research, and maybe three times more planets. Furthermore, I was thinking I was doing at least fairly well, and am competitive with the other races.

I guess the nature of my questions, is how one race can be winning so early in the game? Thanks for the tips, I will be restarting a game, and trying some the strategies being suggested.

[ChrisGb]

Alternatively you just could turn off race specific victory conditions.
That would avoid games to end early and things can develope naturally.