Apollo rover carpet of doom

[Makaz]

Hi,

I just find the IA being massively found of rover on Apollo difficulty. So what happen is am quite efficient on my start and tend to spread to like 6 to 7 cities until turn 80. Spreading that far means I will end up being very close from at least 2 IA on a pangea map or a large map with continents.

Sub turn 80 rushes I usually put off with 2-3 ranger and 1-2 soldiers. I usually keep one group in front of each IA I share a border with.

The problem is between turn 80 and 110. I mean there are 3 types of IA:

+ the colonist - who will spread colonists and not focus on military
+ the wonderguy - who will steal all wonders before you get the tech to start building them = no army
+ the militarist - who just covers the map with units.

Well if you get the last one in front of you that means one of your city will eventually be facing 9 to 14 rovers around turn 90 - 100. This is a tide I always lose one city to. Despite seeing them coming 2-3 turns in advance, I cannot build a defense solid enough and I just get rolled-over (ro-over).

At this stage I m usually purity 1 or 2, and about 40 turns away from the invincible battlesuits. But always too late.


I am just wondering what would be the best defense ? Beeline bsuits more agressively at the expense of development ? Building city defense buildings ? making more soldiers ? Trading favors early on ?

Wonder if anyone's got an opinion or an idea.

Cheers,

 

[aguliondew]

City defenses and range units in the city. You can get the first 3 defensive builds early if you have to rush them. One will stop early game rushes, 2 will stop mid-game ones with range units to support.

 

[ZHONN]

Affinity level 2 helps very much, as it gives you gunners instead of rangers. They're easily spammable and replacable. If you have 7 cities with internal trade routes you should have at least three times the production of the attacking AI. Most of the time they won't even be bothered to attack if you keep your army size big enough and pick affinity techs. And with the immense amount of production, why not have an army?

 

[Ryika]

Don't like "cheesing" with affinity4-units, so I usually build some normal units. Found that a few melee units are enough to defend in most cases. If the land is exceptionally flat, Ill add a few gunners, if it's rough terrain, then just barricading and swapping whatever gets seriously hurt does the job all by itself. A rocket battery will allow to kill off injured units, which then leads to very favorable peace deals - or an invitation to conquer some cities.

But in most cases AI will not even TRY to attack you as long as you have some military and a trade route with them and they have another target in range. They'll even go for neighbors that are stronger than you, although I'm not sure why. Maybe they just don't get diplo-bonuses for trade routes with each other.

 

[BroOfTheSun]

More melee units to ranged units might be a better option for defending. Also, rocket batteries.

 

[kingsbury]

Affinity level 2 helps very much, as it gives you gunners instead of rangers. They're easily spammable and replacable. If you have 7 cities with internal trade routes you should have at least three times the production of the attacking AI. Most of the time they won't even be bothered to attack if you keep your army size big enough and pick affinity techs. And with the immense amount of production, why not have an army?

Gunners are the ideal early rush unit in my experience. You can sometimes knock out 2-3 civs early on if you spam gunners.

 

[omniclast]

It's good to know which AIs are more likely to do this based on their personality type, so you can be prepared if you start next to one / not expand too aggressively towards them. I've found Polystralia and the Slavs are most likely to launch rover CoDs early game. PAU will also get aggressive as the expand real fast but they are easy to maintain cooperation with as they ask for low-cost favours a lot.

 

[Elz Majesto]

Hi,

I just find the IA being massively found of rover on Apollo difficulty. So what happen is am quite efficient on my start and tend to spread to like 6 to 7 cities until turn 80. Spreading that far means I will end up being very close from at least 2 IA on a pangea map or a large map with continents.

Sub turn 80 rushes I usually put off with 2-3 ranger and 1-2 soldiers. I usually keep one group in front of each IA I share a border with.

The problem is between turn 80 and 110. I mean there are 3 types of IA:

+ the colonist - who will spread colonists and not focus on military
+ the wonderguy - who will steal all wonders before you get the tech to start building them = no army
+ the militarist - who just covers the map with units.

Well if you get the last one in front of you that means one of your city will eventually be facing 9 to 14 rovers around turn 90 - 100. This is a tide I always lose one city to. Despite seeing them coming 2-3 turns in advance, I cannot build a defense solid enough and I just get rolled-over (ro-over).

At this stage I m usually purity 1 or 2, and about 40 turns away from the invincible battlesuits. But always too late.


I am just wondering what would be the best defense ? Beeline bsuits more agressively at the expense of development ? Building city defense buildings ? making more soldiers ? Trading favors early on ?

Wonder if anyone's got an opinion or an idea.

Cheers,

Do you mind posting your build orders for the capital and cities?
I would love to have that expansion you got going by turn 80, the most I managed was 5 by turn 80.

 

[Prophet Skeram]

1 or 2 Affinity levels by turn 100 is definitely too low on Apollo (assuming normal game speed). My best guess is that you're being overly expansionistic early on, neglecting both your science and your military. This makes you a primary target for the AI because they (usually) dislike your rapid expansion (they will "covet your lands" and "think you're building too many cities") and because they rightfully see you as weak (almost no army + low tech) at that point.

My best advice would be to tone down your expansion a little and focus more on science and get a few more early defenses.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1 or 2 Affinity levels by turn 100 is definitely too low on Apollo (assuming normal game speed). My best guess is that you're being overly expansionistic early on, neglecting both your science and your military. This makes you a primary target for the AI because they (usually) dislike your rapid expansion (they will "covet your lands" and "think you're building too many cities") and because they rightfully see you as weak (almost no army + low tech) at that point.

My best advice would be to tone down your expansion a little and focus more on science and get a few more early defenses.

The alternative, if you have that kind of city count and internal trade routes, is to simply hammer down their units with some rover + ranged spam of your own.

I rather like rovers, especially if I can use gunboats, because of their move speed. If you're not on a true Pangaea type map you can easily run 3-4 gunboats to flatline a city then move a 3move rover in and take it.

There's no way the AI should be beating you with rover spam unless you're behind in affinity and under-defended in unit count. It's not good enough at pushing into rotating melee walls and ranged to be a serious threat if you make a reasonable effort to invest in units.

 

[Roxlimn]

1-2 Affinity levels is like a quest and a half. Too little for turn 100. At least get one affinity tech - Alien Genetics or something.