Combating AI spaceship build

[automator]

Last two games have ended in a mad dash to beat the AI to space. Last finished game (on Warlord) ended with an allied AI team finishing the ship when I was 0.2% away from a domination victory in territory. Current game (noble), I finally started my spaceship after some threat management on my continent. At this point, Mansa Musa has built all the casing and one booster. I'm pretty sure I can out-build him, but he's got me worried. I've never made it this far in a Noble game (I always get the poop slapped out of me once gunpowder gets known), and I'd like it to be a win, since I'm huge and have a giant point lead at the start of the 21st century. He's on his own continent, so attack would be hard; and he's been a good friend through the game, though if he gets too close to finishing (I've got spies around his territory), I'll make some strategic attacks to distract him. Diplomatic win is out of the question, as Hatsheptut has curried world favor, and always gets a few more UN votes than I do. No way can I do a dom or conquest win.

How do you deal with an AI spaceship build, assuming you're not intending to go to space yourself?

Do you automatically swich to kicking out a ship of your own?
Do you use spy sabotage?
Go to war?
Attempt to ally yourself with the ship builder?
Attempt to ally with another strong AI for the purpose of quickly building a ship?

 

[TCGTRF]

Last two games have ended in a mad dash to beat the AI to space. Last finished game (on Warlord) ended with an allied AI team finishing the ship when I was 0.2% away from a domination victory in territory. Current game (noble), I finally started my spaceship after some threat management on my continent. At this point, Mansa Musa has built all the casing and one booster. I'm pretty sure I can out-build him, but he's got me worried. I've never made it this far in a Noble game (I always get the poop slapped out of me once gunpowder gets known), and I'd like it to be a win, since I'm huge and have a giant point lead at the start of the 21st century. He's on his own continent, so attack would be hard; and he's been a good friend through the game, though if he gets too close to finishing (I've got spies around his territory), I'll make some strategic attacks to distract him. Diplomatic win is out of the question, as Hatsheptut has curried world favor, and always gets a few more UN votes than I do. No way can I do a dom or conquest win.

How do you deal with an AI spaceship build, assuming you're not intending to go to space yourself?

Do you automatically swich to kicking out a ship of your own?
Do you use spy sabotage?
Go to war?
Attempt to ally yourself with the ship builder?
Attempt to ally with another strong AI for the purpose of quickly building a ship?

Only way you're going to beat him is by getting him into a war with someone or building enough nukes to get through his SDI.

The big problem with MM is that he is really singleminded about that ship as long as he's at peace.

The easiest way I found to beat him on noble in Space is to start when the Industrial age begins:

Beeline to Assembly Line, Industrialism and Rocketry. Build Apollo.

If you have the Kremlin, build all the Wonders that you want to and can immediately.

Beeline to Fiber Optics, build Internet.

While building 'net, beeline to Robotics, build Space Elevator.

Fill in necessary techs for spaceship parts until 'Net comes in. Rest is gravy.

Tom

 

[scienide09]

If your looking for a victory and your rivals are ahead of you in the spacerace, you have to act fast.
If you have no chance of building a spaceship in time, then war is your best option. If you wait until it looks like he might get the victory, by the time you build a strong military force and cross the ocean, it will probably be too late.

Even if you can't get your militarty to his lands immediately, perhaps other civs can? Try bribing them into action against Mansa while you build up your military.

Also, your spies can be a huge help, if you have a strong economy to afford the missions. Remember that unless they are caught, the nation you sabotage doesn't know who did it. Look for their strategic resources, like aluminum, and try destroying the improvements on those tiles. Also, destroying food resource improvements can starve cities, and going after happy resources can make his citizens unhappy enough that the begin to strike.

 

[fmlizard]

I was once stuck all the way across the world from Mao who was I believe two parts away when I was just starting SS Thrusters. I still needed like three more techs, plus building the darn things. I had to buy 20-25 turns when it looked like it was all over in 10 or so. I immediately took every city that was not building Thrusters and rush built nukes as a last ditch effort. Even though Mao was my best ally and was friendly, I launched a 10 nuke bombardment all in one dastardly sneak attack. Desperate times call for desperate measures. As he picked up the pieces of his shattered empire and crossed the ocean for vengeance, I frantically built the ship parts. Beijing and Shanghai were both hit three times and were turned into glowing parking lots. Other industrial cities as revealed by my spy were bombarded as well. I even wiped out a mountain range with aluminum and uranium in it.

He never built another part...he did build SDI soon after

 

[mnf]

How about some spies sabotaging his ship parts repeatedly? You only need to sabotage one part to delay his launch. Or sabotage his aluminium supply? It's expensive, and I think there are diplomatic penalties if you get caught. But that doesn't matter if you're already going for spaceship victory.

But then again, I suppose strategic attacks are just easier. Capture his aluminium resource and raze a few of his production cities would be good enough?

Which brings to mind...the Apollo Program is required to build the spaceship parts. Now what happens if you loose the city that has the Apollo Program? I suppose all your parts in production would turn to gold, and you'd have to rebuild the Apollo first?

So for a strategic attack, the priority would be to take out his Apollo Program first?

PS: Last time I was loosing the spaceship race, I just proceeded to bribe the whole world to get me a diplomatic victory...But if you are determined to get the spaceship and nothing else...

 

[chaunceymo]

I find you need one of three things to stop the computer from a spaceship win if they get a head start:

1) Superior research/production. Speaks for itself. If you can get the more advanced techs quicker and build the parts quicker, you win.

2) Strong and usable military. Usable as in it needs to be able to access them. One game I was on the other side of the map from a computer opponent who started building the ship (Cyrus, who tends to be good at that). There was no way that using transports alone I would be able to get a conquering force there, but don't underestimate the value of airlifts. If you have airports in most of your cities then you can conquer some of the opponent's smaller border cities and airlift a bunch of your units to them. Then just knock out a few of their big production cities and no spaceship for them.

3) Spies and TONS of money. As mnf said, spies can sabotage spaceship parts. The problem is it costs a freaking fortune (thousands of gold per attempt) and doesn't have a great chance of success. You can keep cranking out spies and if you have a sizable savings stall for a while until you can get #1 or #2 in place. Spies aren't a good long term solution, though.

If you don't have any of the above three, revert to a much earlier save or start a new game and save yourself the pain.

 

[Jarrod32]

I found myself in a similar situation in a recent game. Mansa was on his final spaceship part...I had all but my last part either done or in progress...but I had three parts still in progress (a few turns away). War was the only option. I took (and razed) the city that was building his final spaceship part (when he was three turns away from finishing it), and also took the city in which he had built the Space Elevator (he beat me to that by three turns). I couldn't hold that, though...

During that time, I had finished all but one spaceship part, so I had managed to pull to equal footing...we each had one part to build, and neither of us had started it yet (I needed the last tech).

Peace was signed, and we each started the last spaceship part. My spies found the city where he was building his last part...he was two turns ahead of me (that is, he was going to finish his last part two turns before me).

A few episodes of sabotage by my spies, and I beat him to space by two turns. But an earlier post was correct...when Mansa has a tech lead, he is focused on a spaceship. I've had other games where I've hit a victory condition when Mansa had several spaceship parts completed.

 

[emills]

@ mnf: projects (apollo, manhattan, space ship parts) are not located in a city and cannot be destroyed once created. you can destroy/capture the city during the build and end it, but not afterwards.

 

[mnf]

emills:

Ah thanks, I wasn't aware of that aspect of projects. I think I need to watch out for Mansa Musa in my current game, then. He's on the one end of the Pangaea map, has plenty of water tiles and quite some grassland, and is already among the top tech AIs. Maybe it's always a good idea to light up some wars for the man before gunpowder. Slow his growth a bit.

 

[sgrig]

The easiest way to stop a rival spaceship production is to get that civ to war. For some reason an AI at war stops all spaceship production, even if they have very little left to go. If you are lucky, you could get one of their neighbours to attack them, or declare war yourself, and then get some allies to help.

I my last game on Monarch, Cyrus was building the spaceship extremely quickly, and was actually quite far ahead of me, so to slow him down, I declared war on him, and got another 3 or 4 allies against him.

Luckily for me, Cyrus was on another continent, and was fighting two civs there, so he couldn't bring any troops over to my continent. I finally signed the peace treaty when I was 3 turns away from completing the spaceship.

 

[mnf]

Odd though, I was playing a Warlord game recently to try fix my gameplay, and my German Panzers were rolling through the Chinese country, pushing back combined Chinese, Japanese and Mongolian Cavalry stacks easily with the aid of the powerful Luftwaffe bombers, only to find out with my spy that Mao was still building the Apollo Program in his capital with my Panzers already laying siege to the city.

Maybe the AIs won't give up the spaceship so easily if you've clearly dominated the game and the spaceship is their last and only hope (however slim).

 

[automator]

Well, I did win (yesterday during lunch break). Switched all my high production cities (most were doing 100+ hammers per turn) to spaceship parts. Mansa was building the last of two parts (he kept asking for spaceship related techs, what a tool) when I finished in 2017. I was tech leader from about the industrial age on, and had lots of production heavy cities, but I'm still glad I switched from military to spaceship production on time.

I was even able to fight a little war with some leftover units in the mean time, taking out my former friend, Saladin.

Next game, I'm removing spaceship as a win option.

 

[demetrious]

Next game, I'm removing spaceship as a win option.

Seems like that significantly handicaps the AI to me. I guess whatever you like just seems like you probably should bump up the difficulty because the space race is the AI method to win.

To me, that is really the timer you have to beat - especially at anything above Prince - the AI spaceship race. ie a cultural win simply has to be done prior to the AI completing the spaceship or you didn't win.

 

[Mordraken]

...but I'm still glad I switched from military to spaceship production on time.

I was going to respond to this until I saw you won (congrats!). Like many others responded, I had the same problem with my ally Musa and ended up losing by 2 turns. I made two mistakes: (1) I went to war with another civ instead of focusing on space parts and (2) I had % into culture as I was fighting a cultural war with another ally (I call it the "weaponless boarder attack" ). If I had 10% more into research, I would have had all the techs to build spaceship parts faster, and if I had more production devoted to spaceships instead of conquest, I would have won.

Given the situation, I should have also bribed someone to attack him... oh well, live & learn...