Are you playing under the misguded notion that being a "peaceful" society means you can neglect military tech for most of the game?

If you're playing against Cravers...the only thing that they understand is a good spanking. So tech up your military and beat a few of their fleets. Give yourself some space to expand and then try to make peace or a truce with them.

For me...being a peaceful player means that I'm strong enough that the upstart empires pick on someone else. YMMV.

Slashman wrote:

Are you playing under the misguded notion that being a "peaceful" society means you can neglect military tech for most of the game?

If you're playing against Cravers...the only thing that they understand is a good spanking. So tech up your military and beat a few of their fleets. Give yourself some space to expand and then try to make peace or a truce with them.

For me...being a peaceful player means that I'm strong enough that the upstart empires pick on someone else. YMMV.

Thanks for the reply but that hasn't really helped me.

What I understand from this is that just about anybody can force you to abandon all non military exploits just because they can toy with you if you haven't invested enough in military.
Is there any point then in not going full military and just take the stuff you lack from your neighbours?
If there is how do you balance non military stuff with building a fleet?

I mostly play slow matches with 7 opponents. By when is it in general a good idea to have medium/large ships and a sizeable fleet?

koxsos wrote:

Not really, it almost always comes down to military in the end.

Either you can invest time into better economy and eventually claim return on said investment in better ship output.

As a defender you can outpace enemy production simply by having the ships in system rather than 4 systems away. And you also have ability to shift counter designs immidiately.

Especially in early game, you can opt to utilize market, dust and massively produced long range scout ship design to manage a makeshift defense which can hold if not completely turn the tables.

As for cravers in particular, everything early game you do, cravers (and nakalim for that matter) can do better, the fact that they can obtain a T3 medium hull in first 10 turns, can easily spell destruction in hands of a skilled player. As far as single player goes, just reserach and use market for dust advantage and you will be just fine.

As far as the misguided notion goes, you can easily win without single military tech, take umbral choir for instance.

That's assuming he has Penumbra. If he's playing the Unfallen or Sophons(without the expansion)...I don't know how he can without bribing his way out of every situation and that's not going to work so well in all instances.

And again that's also assuming he's got pirates turned off or at least set to easy.

Actually as Unfallen if you pop Trusted Broker law turn one, by turn 15 you can force peace at literally all other competitors and at the same time have Cordial state with the pirate league. Really strong strategy that I tend to use often. 

mamarider wrote:

Actually as Unfallen if you pop Trusted Broker law turn one, by turn 15 you can force peace at literally all other competitors and at the same time have Cordial state with the pirate league. Really strong strategy that I tend to use often. 

That includes Cravers?