Colony Blockading

[BasketCase]

This question has been percolating in my mind ever since I started playing GC2--but, after yet another game in which alien colony ships go flying arrogantly into my territory and colonizing right next to my homeworld:

Has anyone ever tried putting out early pea-shooter starships to shoot down intruding colony ships? All it takes is anything with an engine and one attack point.

The AI's seem to take a long time to get those first warships out, and they're really bad at escorting their colony ships to boot. However, the research needed to build a pea-shooter takes some time, during which the other races on the map are land-rushing.

Note that I've never actually bothered to try out pea-shooter blockading myself in a straight game. The tactic has turned out to be viable in the second map of the campaign, but only because you already have basic engines and weapons when you start--and they're just the right size to fit one engine and one laser on a tiny hull.

Thoughts?

 

[Vizzini]

Has anyone ever tried putting out early pea-shooter starships to shoot down intruding colony ships? All it takes is anything with an engine and one attack point.

You could, but why bother? Especially that early in the game when the differences in AI production capacity and your own production capacity are at their worst? The AI will out-build you early in the game - getting into a war that fast could be fatal. (Sandbox games - haven't actually played the Campaign yet)

Personally I rush for the best one or two planets in a cluster and leave the rest (PQ9 or lower) to the AI to colonize for me. So long as I have the best planet(s) in that system those planets the AI colonizes are only "on loan" to the AI until I flip them. Free planets. No colonizer or colonists required

 

[Phoenix_56721]

Yeah I do the same thing, let the AI have those lower level planets I'll get them in the end anyways.

 

[W.i.n.t.e.r]

be quick- or be dead

I heard word that someone at the official galcivII forums wants to tweak the game so as for the initial planet conolization spree to be much slower...

 

[Pentium]

be quick- or be dead

Yeah, it's true. I agree that colonizing period should take longer, at least one year. But there is a cure for this: Huge map with few opponents.

I usually send one Colony to each star before I scout them, so if a star has 2 habitable planets, I can only settle the best one. The others usually flip quite quickly.

 

[W.i.n.t.e.r]

How about making Colony Ships more expensive? For what I do at the start (since I know the first thing the AI does is race to the next best planets within reach- and the AI knows exactly where all inhabitable planets are from start-off) is to buy most ships, so I get a new colony ship almost every turn and send it out to colonize.

I play on huge maps with tight clusters cuz I hate starting off tight up in some corner. I was so very unfortunate though that in my last game the Korx started off at the oposite side of the very same cluster I set off They were kindly enough to merely grab 4 planets apart from their own system. But war was programed and as soon as all planets had been consumed by either side they started warmongering. Obviously they lost, since I had managed to grab 12 planets against their 4 new ones and was able to prepare my attacks based at my own planets in the same systems. It was however disturbing how the AI was so very frantic about grabbing planets, instead of first developign the ones they had colonized.

This war took awfully long, since none of the two had any meaningfull fleet- and virtualy no transports (expensive at this early stage). In the end I stopped after getting all 4 contested systems for myself, so as to prevent any future conflict of this type and spared the Korx'es home system. My economy was in tatters though as everything had been going out to raise my meagre war fleet- all this while elsewhere in the galaxy the first galactic superprojects were being built :S

 

[Sembiance]

How about making Colony Ships more expensive? For what I do at the start (since I know the first thing the AI does is race to the next best planets within reach- and the AI knows exactly where all inhabitable planets are from start-off) is to buy most ships, so I get a new colony ship almost every turn and send it out to colonize.

I was wondering if it was just me!
I played my third game yesterday and I saw all these great planets but it was taking 10+ turns to build a colony ship.

Just for fun I decided to see how much it would cost to buy it and it was only like 864 or something each only after 1 turn of building.

I had like 4000 or something and bought lots, I think it made a huge difference in my standing early in the game