How do you stop a spaceship?

[Briquette]

What are the best strategies for stopping an opponent who is ahead of you in the space race?

Of course destroying a city with the space elevator may help, but are there ways to actually destroy the ship? What if you raze the capitol, or the city that built the Apollo Program?

Are there other better ways to stop or slow their progress?

I'd like to hear what's working for people besides "I don't let it get that far."

 

[evYl]

hmmm...

This should probably be moved to the strategy tips section.

Anyways, Some Ideas.

1. It's a good idea to have spies in the production cities of formidable rivals. That way you can see what they are building, and try to sabotage production if necessary. Once the space race has started, however, it is really too late to be building spies.


2. Start a war. You've made friends? right? Time to put them to good use! Ask your "friends" to declare war on the space bound civ. Don't go to war yourself unless you have no other option. (i.e. you are not building your own spaceship). If you go to war be sure to pillage their alluminum first.


3. Nuke the crap out of them . I never do this, but include it only for the sake of completeness.


Of course the best solution is always to "beat them to it." Or "Win the game much earlier." I hope you found some of these ideas useful.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

The only way to completely stop their production is to wipe them off the face of the planet. Pillage every improvement and raze all their cities to the ground.
Or you could just simply slow them down by using spies to pillage aluminum and vital resources. Also, limited war works.
Or you could get the parts faster. Build plenty of commerce cities to boost that research. Also build plenty of production cities to quickly produce those parts and to build you a strong army to fend off any AI attack which could slow you down.

 

[tombeef]

3. Nuke the crap out of them . I never do this, but include it only for the sake of completeness.

A very satisfying and cool looking sequence of events. If you havn't nuked the crap out of the AI yet, you don't know what you're missing.

 

[ArmoredCavalry]

I too have recently had to stop 2 spacebound civs at once and I decided to send in spies and started the manhatten project the moment I saw the ss casing message.


The spies were caught nearly every time,
The AIs got notice of the bomb, before my first IBCM they were well on thier way to the SDI, Nukes were my absolute last resort so I was hesitant to use them, BIG mistake. When I had to fall back on nukes it took about 20 to get 3 through.

I tried my friends, but they were friends with my enemies too, go figure, couldn't bribe them cause I wasted all of my money on spies.

I was forced to use the regular forces, Both AI's were crippled by this last 6 turn war, allowing ME to enter space. But my point is nothing you do in the modern era can prevent a SS production once it has started, just have to beat them to it.

 

[Dusty Monkey]

Wouldnt it be a good idea to nuke any city building SDI?


That would make it a lot easier to nuke the city building the borg ship later on

 

[Jmaz]

In one gmae I was playing it relativly early and the message came up that Ghandi had completed "The Apollo Prog.", HOLY S***!!! I said to myself. At the nearest oppurtunity I got a spy over to the other side of the world to see what he was up to. (In the meantime, Manza completed it also). In the first available city at took a look at what he was researching and he was back on something like Democracy. Looking at his other cities showed me the Casing and Thrusters but nothing else. So that was a sigh of relief. It was just that I had taken the "southern route " to the techs while he went straight to rocketry and sattelites. It did end up somewhat close but I did beat him by at least one peice. (Mansa did the same as Ghandi).

Mansa ended up with the Space Elevator but was still at least one tech short at the end. I do love spies

Hope this helps

 

[megalomaniac]

My favorite way to keep the AI from getting a space race victory is to disable it as a victory contidion at the start of the game.

 

[Holbek]

Full scale war.
The moment you can build spies, you have them stationed in the two biggest cities of your two biggest opponents - always do this!

Normally when you launch an attack they will change production to units - neglecting their SS-production - if not - you haven't landed a big enough attackforce in their territory.

If you can't get the offensive going, it might work to put a lot of defensive troops with the right promotions on some forested hill inside their borders (remember at least one unit with the medic-promotion) - to keep them occupied. This should keep at least a few of their production cities focused on units instead of SS-components.

 

[acidsatyr]

i agree about nukes, if they don't have SDI yet.... in my last game, hatty and munsa had apollo completed while i just finished Manhattan p. For the next 20 turns I built 8 nukes, 2 went to hatty on same continent, sent 20 tanks, pillaged everything, technologically she never moved from that point on... as for munsa, well after all those nukes went there, it took him 30 turns to complete robotics or something along those lines... it was funny to see 5 civs all declared war on me, resulting in so unhappy folks I had to run that culture slide for 15 turns at 90%... after war i build Apollo and won...anyway point is if you see you'll loose to space race, don't race with them, slow them down until you are sure you'll win…there is a long wat to go from ss cating to ss engine…

 

[StrideCollosus]

I think it depends on how close you are to getting your victory and how much you're prepared to piss them off.

1. Spies (assuming you have them) can hamstring their production and/or pillage production-based improvements (i.e. aluminium, mines, etc). If the spy gets caught the negative modifier is not too bad so this is the safest option.

2. Indirect sabotage - get some other sap to declare war on them or stop trading. Some civs seem to change their entire tack when they go to war, others will continue building SS parts, so you'll need to maintain intelligence to see whether it's had any effect. It's also worth checking which techs they've got as a good war can slow down their research as well.

3. War - depending on how close you are to winning, you can either attack them in an attempt to pillage and cripple their economy. If they are close to completing the SS then you might have to go on a focused mission to take out that city and/or critical resources at all costs.

Having written this it's now obvious to me that the most important aspect to all of these options is intelligence, and that generally implies spies (or at least line-of-sight due to religion, etc).

 

[Holbek]

Also, check trades.
It might be that some other civ is trading them aluminium - bribe that civ to cancel deals.
Combine this with all the above.

 

[al_thor]

The space race is the AI crutch. It's the only way it knows how to win. Sure, it can try Culture, but that's easily countered with your own culture or war. Stopping a space ship is almost impossible IMHO. That's why I turn that stupid victory condition OFF. I absolutely hate it.

 

[Quasimodo]

In the later stages of the game, I start preparing for the space race, or prepping to foil the other civs.

1) Try to build as much wealth as possible. You'll need it to support your spies on their sabotage runs. If my technology is at a decent level, I'll drop my science slider all the way down to 0 for a turn or two it give me a boost in wealth.

2) Have a number of spies ready to scout their cities for what production is going on.

3) Scout the resources. If you can sabotage their aluminum resources and sabotage the mines around their cities, they'll be going at a snails pace of building the parts.

9/10 times this strategy works for me.

 

[Crighton]

A very satisfying and cool looking sequence of events. If you havn't nuked the crap out of the AI yet, you don't know what you're missing.

lol, too true (and screw the global warming consequences, the damage from gw is a pittance in exchange for avoiding certain defeat).

spies are your best option until you go to war

 

[Brave Jay]

Nukes are your friends

 

[automator]

I go for war.

In a recent game, while I was busy engaged in war, best buddy Ghandi built the Apollo and started cranking out spaceship pieces. Once I finished my war, he was done with every peice but two (I believe Life Support and Cockpit). I refitted my army, set them up against the borders (six armies of Modern Armor, Marines, Mech Inf, SAMs, Artillery and Gunships ... I don't mess around) and declared. Within a couple turns I destroyed or captured all but four cities on the continent, which ended up split north/south by my new territory. I had his one legendary culture city and he'd completely stopped building spaceship parts.

Unfortunately, while this was going on, Elizabeth kept building her spaceship, which I ignored, thinking I was on my way to a Domination win. She finished when I had 59% of the world's territory. Foiled again.

 

[lutzj]

crap

i am appauled!