Intentional slow expansion?

[ungy]

Having gotten back into MOO a bit in the last few months after a decade I've run into this situation a few times.
I've been playing med maps with a variety of races.
My normal strategy is what I assume is basic MOO strategy--aggressive rex.
However, I often lose the first vote which is normally before I can do anything of consequence diplomatically (no spectator wars allowed per RB exploit list).
Do you guys ever intentionally pass on good planets to keep out of second place (assuming you can estimate that well enough)?

Would it matter if you had a race that had an advantage that made it easier to win with a small empire (i.e. bugs, mek, dar)?

 

[vmxa]

Well the vote will not come for some time on that map, so I should be up for election. I would expect a few rounds of abstains to not allow anyone to win.

Rarely the Humans will get up some friend and may win a vote. If you have not gotten enough on your own to prevent that. In that it is on to Final War and we shall see what happens.

I would not pass up a good planet for anything, if I had any idea I could hold it. It is much harder to take it until you are advanced.

 

[ungy]

Well the vote will not come for some time on that map, so I should be up for election. I would expect a few rounds of abstains to not allow anyone to win.

Rarely the Humans will get up some friend and may win a vote. If you have not gotten enough on your own to prevent that. In that it is on to Final War and we shall see what happens.

I would not pass up a good planet for anything, if I had any idea I could hold it. It is much harder to take it until you are advanced.

The first vote usually comes on medium between 2370 and 2400 depending on who's in the game.
IMHO it's usually pretty hopeless to try final war from the position you have then.
I agree it does seem counter-intuitive to let the AI have a decent planet to keep yourself out of the vote--don't think I've ever done it but sometimes wished I had.

 

[vmxa]

I expect to have at least 3 rounds of no vote winner. At that point I can probably hang on, unless the brains are doing well. They will then give too much tech to the lesser races and I will be in trouble.

Normally there is enough friction to be safe from a vote as long as the apes are not the other race in the election.

 

[Zed-F]

The more typical solution to an early vote cheese win by alliance-spamming AIs is to fight diplo cheese with diplo cheese. Forment a few wars and a hyper-early vote loss becomes much less likely. Admittedly, this does become more problematic when observing the exploit list, but if someone declares on you the option is still there to call in some assistance.

 

[malicious bloke]

I dont see how spectator wars really count as an exploit. It isn't like a random bug in the game mechanics (except maybe an AI weakness, but they get all sorts of little cheats so it levels out).

It might be dishonourable as a tactic but I dont see how its unfair

 

[vmxa]

I have no position on it one way or the other. I do not use and never really evaluated it.

 

[Zed-F]

The rationale for spectator wars being an exploit is twofold:
1) They make the game too easy. Even on the hardest difficulties, if you can get even one spectator war going, oftentimes the entire galaxy collapses into chaos, with everyone but the player being at war with at least one opponent. In those cases, the player is almost always guaranteed to win, since he can build up peacefully while everyone else is at war with one another.
2) They can be engendered too easily. The AIs accept 'let's you and him fight' logic far too readily even when war is not in their best interest. Oftentimes it's easier to break an alliance between AIs by getting one AI to declare on its partner than by asking it to break the alliance. Since there's really no penalty for asking an AI to declare on another AI and having the move fail, you can just keep doing it every so often until they agree. It's a no-risk winning move in most cases.

Thus the stipulation that you must be at war before you can call in allies. Then it's not 'let's you and him fight', it's a more natural and realistic alliance against a common foe.

 

[vmxa]

I guess one of the reason I never paid much attention to it is that I play mostly on small maps. In that universe, wars will breakout anyway. Planets are grabbed quite early and then you have to take one from someone, so the races war.

As you see in my run, if I made peace, it was not long before they attacked and it did not matter if I was stronger or weaker. They do not even need to be at war to attack.

 

[AlanSHB]

I tend to bend the rule by just ground invading the first AI I come in contact with's 4th planet.

I'm _Very_ agressive early on because I know I'll buy population that the AI won't. Conveniently this tends to guarantee that if I need to start a war between two races, it can be arranged.

In a recent game I genocided the sillicoids with nuke bombs and gropo as bulrathi simply so I didn't have to deal with them. This wasn't "We had a war" this was "I can't be bothered to build more colony ships. I'll take some losses on the way in - die rock scum." Sometime before I'd even swapped over for more than token range research.

I'd gotten a fertile planet and the fertile event on my homeworld to help offset the costs, but it's not unusual for me to be the one with 200 transports in the air just waiting for their day.

 

[ungy]

I tend to bend the rule by just ground invading the first AI I come in contact with's 4th planet.

I'm _Very_ agressive early on because I know I'll buy population that the AI won't.

In a recent game I genocided the sillicoids with nuke bombs and gropo as bulrathi simply so I didn't have to deal with them. This wasn't "We had a war" this was "I can't be bothered to build more colony ships. I'll take some losses on the way in - die rock scum." Sometime before I'd even swapped over for more than token range research.

Is this on impossible?

 

[ungy]

The rationale for spectator wars being an exploit is twofold:
1) They make the game too easy.
2) They can be engendered too easily.

Thus the stipulation that you must be at war before you can call in allies. Then it's not 'let's you and him fight', it's a more natural and realistic alliance against a common foe.

Yes I completely agree about the spectator war as exploit.

My problem with these early votes is I don't usually know I'm in danger, and it's usually a time when I'm reluctant to start a war. It seems like you can do a really early war which is mostly a gropo event, or you have to wait for some tech to take out the AI bases. There's a middle game lull where it seems like you defend unclaimed planets from AI colships, build a few missile bases, hope for PSV either in research, trade or steal, and just generally build factories, bases and tech.

So I guess I'll just keep expanding and hope for the best.

 

[Zed-F]

Until you have a 1/3 voting block, on impossible it's safest to assume the vote is always a danger

 

[sargon0]

I completely agree spectator wars are an exploit even though I used one (for the first time) in the Meklar challenge. It seemed a shame to risk a very likely vote loss in an interesting friendly challenge but the exploit devalues the result noticeably. Still the game remembered and dealt me a quick vote loss in The Bugs of Life game.

We will just have to accept the fate of the RNG in this brilliant but flawed gem of a game.

 

[AlanSHB]

Is this on impossible?

I don't play on any difficulty other than impossible.

You can wage a war of agression early against some races on impossible.
You can wage a war of agression in the mid game (say fusion bombs on a small + a beam/repulsor on a large) vs most races
You can always wage a war of agression in the late game (got star gates while the AI has advanced tech?)

While the game is a defensive game (massive missile bases will let you get to the point in tech where the computer's edge is meaningless) the inherent flaw of the AI (Failure to defend sanely) is present at all stages. As long as you wage strategic war, you will come out ahead.

For example In the very early game, especially against the meklar, klackon, and silicoid - it is almost always to the player's advantage to go gropo. Even more so if you're willing to spend to regro pop. Those three races all really take a noticable loss in growth curve if they lose 40m people. You take a dip as well, but you can react to your dip and (spending on pop growth) recover better/faster. A secondary benefit is that you will have an honest war - which in turn lets you get the other AI bogged down.

The biggest edge the human player has in moo is that you understand _why_ you are at war, in a way that the computer cannot. The computer senses weakness, and will punish you (or the other AI) equally for it. It does not create weakness, and that is what you must do if you are to achieve your ends.