Scubasage wrote:


Are you and the AI basically just sitting there playing Sim City? You will always lose this way with a default or generalist custom faction, since the AI gets bonuses to make up for their not too bright decisions. If you make a Sophon race, for example, and take a little of everything so you don't have any glaring weaknesses, then it will be that much harder to stay ahead of the AI, rather than giving yourself a large weakness (say, in combat) to allow you to take a massive advantage in other areas.

Well I've played several different games, mostly on the newbie difficulty. Just got trounced in Normal difficulty pretty badly. The Sophons seem to start out with a slight advantage; but what i don't understand is why the research bonus they get is not keeping me ahead in research. I'm not getting attacked early, it's mostly just the pirates early in the game and they're not too bad. Pirates offer an opportunity to gain some fleet XP, so it's a good thing. My early research strategy is to unlock the planet colonizations then alternate between research advantages and happiness advantages as needed. It seems that i'm falling behind in every single criteria very early in the game, and then continue to lose ground. Really not focusing on military strength here, just looking for a strategy to the economic victory, seems unobtainable but the AI is using this path to victory against me.



Seems to me that developing planets within the same system is creating as much expansion unhappiness as grabbing single worlds in multiple systems; and that doesn't really make sense to me.



In a couple of the 1v1 games i played, i noted that the empires were not separated by wormholes.



The AI decision making process doesn't seem to be bad at all, the advantages they get are unfairly weighting the game in their favor. And I'm mostly looking at this from the perspective of a single player game.



If i shift my focus to the conquest or expansion victory it may be a whole lot easier, needs more testing.



EDIT: example, just started 4 empire game on normal difficulty, with United Empire, on turn 23 i'm already in last place for every viewable critera.

If I ever play a race that isn't based on an early style of Zergling rush Supremacy victory, I basically always win through either Wonder or Science. I've won with all 3 methods (Supremacy, Wonder and Science) on every difficulty level up to serious. Tackling impossible next, then endless (gotta remake all my factions and test out the new tweaks).



Basically, the game is actually really easy once you start to get the hang of it.



Could you be more specific about what you do generally and what happens that causes you to fall behind?

Are you getting overwhelmed by early attacks? Get some defensive modules early to counter their weapon type. Remember, 1 Flak module counters 3 Missile modules, and something similar for Kinetics. If the opponent has beams in the first encounter, then you waited way too long to fight them, as they don't get beams until near the late game, where you should have either wiped them out or gotten a severe technical advantage.

Are you and the AI basically just sitting there playing Sim City? You will always lose this way with a default or generalist custom faction, since the AI gets bonuses to make up for their not too bright decisions. If you make a Sophon race, for example, and take a little of everything so you don't have any glaring weaknesses, then it will be that much harder to stay ahead of the AI, rather than giving yourself a large weakness (say, in combat) to allow you to take a massive advantage in other areas.

In the very first game i played under newbie difficulty with 2 empires in the galaxy (my Pilgrims versus Horatio-AI); I was able to score an expansion victory while completely neglecting to build any system improvements. As soon as I realized there were system improvements to build things became more difficult, lol.



The happiness technologies are a bit too crucial, and they're needed too soon.

Plus I haven't found out how to scrap improvements that might be a drain on your dust income.

I must agree with you in that any victory other than conquest or expansion is extremely difficult. I have only won with technology once and that was after the Horatio got an expansion victory. It seems no matter how well I play the game, the AI plays it perfectly and ultimately wins. As a person who would never think of voluntarily going to war to get a conquest victory, it seems that until the game is made a little easier for peaceful players I'm never going to win before anyone else does.



P.S. I see that this was your first post, welcome to the forums!