MOO1 how to expand in huge galaxies

[civvver]

I'm running into some trouble on those huge galaxies. Usually one or two races (psilons, sakkaras and siliciods are the most likely) run away and colonize huge chunks of the galaxy. I can usually keep up, if the siliciods have 15 planets I can usually check in with 10-12 and mine are generally better since they'll colonize any crappy world. But that's when I run into trouble. I can't seem to keep up and have enough bases or strong enough fleet to defend.

What do you do to defend your territory? Large fleet of small missile ships? Do you throw a lot of research into missiles or maybe force fields for untouchable bases? Force fields work great until some lucky AI stumbles into anti matter bombs or some strong missile you can't stop.

Or maybe you go on the offensive sooner. The issue I have there on the huge galaxies is I never have a strong enough combo of propulsion range and ground troop techs to be able to reach and conquer their planets so wars get drawn out and put me too far behind. Maybe I should bomb their planets instead.

I find what works best for me is usually to stop expanding around 8 planets and try to turtle up and come at them later, but it's not consistent enough and too dependent on the enemy voting against each other and somewhat keeping each other in check.

 

[Harv]

Can I ask if you are playing Average, Hard or Impossible?

I also heard a rumor that the AI starts with some Colony Ships. So the size of the AI empire will then be determined by how many systems are within range.

 

[civvver]

I am playing klackons, 5 opponents, and on hard and impossible is where I run into trouble. I can eek out wins if the enemy doesn't run away and keep themselves in check. Problem is at least half the time the psilons or silicoids will just dominate the galaxy, they'll have around 20 planets, I'll have 10 or so and everyone else like 5 cus the lesser races always suck at expanding like human, mrrshan and bulrathi. Average I can win always, just depends on how long it takes.

My last hard game on huge as klackons had both psilons and silicoids wanting to kill me. I had an awesome base of planets and even enough shields and missile tech to fight off their advances. They had fusion bombs but I had scatter pack 5 missiles and planetary shields 5 with regular shields 5. Silicoids could not destroy my bases but they started dropping doom viruses everywhere and I couldn't research antidote. It sucked. After losing 4 planets I just gave up.


My strategy for winning is usually

-Max factories out on my home world. On huge I do not need to build any extra scouts because there will be plenty of planets uncontested close by. I don't really care if I explore the whole map if I can't colonize it anyway.

-Expand aggressively to 6 or so planets ignoring poor and hostile ones. If there are more juicy ones around I'll keep going to 8 or 10 planets. But I won't research hostile planet tech like inferno bases or longer range fuel cells to get past 6 if there are no good prospects around.

-New planets also max factories, transferring colonists between as necessary. My homeworld is usually the only planet building colony ships. After factories are maxed the ones on the edges build up to 10 bases while rest research. I don't build bases on every world until later, only the perimeter ones.

-I will only build ships if an enemy is close enough to land troops on my planets to avoid sneak attack landings. I'll build a couple destoyers to protect a planet from invasion until they get bases up. Not usually worried about war at this early stage though, it's just a precaution against those sneak attack invasions sakkara and bulrathi love so much.

-Tech wise I always start with a propulsion, usually getting at least range 5 and I try to get at least warp 2 engines, I forget the name. Then being klackon I try to get factories 8 or so to help my new planets get up to speed quicker. Then I go for better missiles, usually at least hyper X rockets. After that is where I get stuck, I never know whether to start on planetary and population increase or go for improved robotic controls or go defensive with force fields. Ideally I like to get robotic controls 3 or 4, then improved population +30 for my planets, then get a planetary shield tech. But sometimes those shield techs come too late.

Maybe I'm researching the wrong stuff or not building a stronger fleet soon enough, I don't know. Enemy seems to always hit me like 20 turns before I'm ready to fight them off.


I'll try posting a walkthrough of klackon, impossible, huge tonight with screenshots and maybe we can see where I am going wrong.

 

[Darza]

Maxing factories prior building Colony Ships is not so good, as it slow you heavily, and keep population low. And yes, AI, what get additional CS'es, spread very fast if hit a good planetology early in arti.

 

[civvver]

Looking at the map we're in a really good position in a corner of the map. If we can block this off we will have a really good defensive position with plenty of planets for a base to our economy.



I blindy send the colony ship to the yellow star as it's also the only one in range. It works out, a nice 70 pop terran planet. The other yellow star isn't as good, it's Helos, arid, 45 pop. Oh well. A little more scounting reveals some other nice planets, Romulus, just a 45 pop minimal but it's in range to use as a bridge to other stuff north of our position.



In the mean time I'm letting Kholdan hit max factories before building anything else. I feel like to take advantage of the klackons production it's best for setting up factories fast. Once Kholdan hits ~75 pop I'll start shuttling colonists off it.

For research I'm targeting propulsion. These planets seem close enough but having better engines is a must.

Found another really good planet, ocean with artifcats. We got improved eco restoration (3 waste per bc) tech from it. It's 4 parsecs but we should be able to colonize a bridge planet and not have to research. Target now is to get those two colonies up.



I start the colony ships in 2315 even though Kholdan isn't maxed factories because they need to build up pop to be able to use them for now so it's not needed yet.

I found another nice jungle planet north of the artifacts one so now we have a clear 5 planets to settle. A few others in the area ended up being asteroids and a couple barren so these 5 is it until I get better propulsion tech. Good news is kholdan is done building factories though so now I'm dumping it all into propulsion. I know some people like to put a little in every tech to see what they will be but I don't see the need yet. I desperately need any increased range over any other level 1 tech.

The tech choice ends up being just one fuel cell, the range 5 one for 1250 which is not so good, I'd rather get the cheap range 4 and leapfrog to range 6 but so be it. After that one finished the next choice again singular was the range 6 fuel cells for 4000 something pts. Seems a little expensive for something we don't need yet. I want better engines badly but right now I'm going to switch to construction to hopefully reduce my factory costs on all these new planets.

Now that we have range 5 I'm also building more colony ships for those two planets south of Kholdan. Scouts are reaching out further too.

I got industrial tech 9, next level was just one choice, duraloy armor. I decide to continue for possibly better industrial tech. I'm still building up and don't need computers or weapons yet.

But next turn I spot a sakara colony ship! contact this soon?! Might need some weapons now.



I knew having all these yellow stars nearby was a little suspicious. I run headlong into the silicoid homeworld and Sssla is right next door too. Fortunately the sakara are only at 5 planets, same as me right now. But I'm going to have to start building bases and researching weapons, they will try to invade sooner rather than later. But being this close gives me a good opportunity for early war.





That's it for this post. I'll play some more and update. But for now, what would you guys focus on? Did I get my colonies out in time? Here's the situation.



I also have two colony ships heading for those two stars, the yellow and green one south of Kholdan. They're both arid, 45 and 70 pop. After this I'm thinking I have to get some better missiles, hopefully pop fusion bombs and go to war with sakarra before they push me out. Some destroyers and/or bases are needed to to stop any potential troop invasions sans escort by them. They love trying that move.

 

[civvver]

This game is already over and I'm not going to continue it. I played further, everything was going along great. I decided it was time to get some improved robotic control techs. Well 3 and 4 missed. Ok that was kind of bad I thought but surely I'll get 5 then. Nope no 5 either. By this time I was totally screwed having neglected other research to go all in on computers. Now the sakara and silicoid are attacking me. I held them off valiantly for quite a while as their puny merculite missiles only did a couple dmg vs my planetary shield 5s stacked with shields 5s. But a few turns later they started bringing stinger missiles in droves. Eventually I was whittled down to one remaining colony before I gave up. For my own sanity I researched all the way to the end of computers. There it was, the only robotic control tech available, controls 7. But by now it's far too late, they all have a million more techs than I do, I can't for the life of me even figure out why I'm still alive.

Such a promising start ruined by awful chance. I could've salvaged it, I had great weapon research opportunities and no one else got robotic controls either. Silicoids eventually got robotic controls 5 many turns in, and eventually sakara got 7. But it took a really long time. I could've researched omega 5 bombs and just gone to town conquering but I really thought just one more tech and those controls 5 will show up and I'll have triple their production for an easy win! It just never materialized.

 

[Harv]

Are you able to zip up your save game files and post them up? Was the game hard or impossible?

 

[civvver]

I can probably find them. I actually have one saved right after I finished my first post, maybe 10 turns after. We can probably salvage this game with a replay! It's klackon, huge, impossible with 5 opponents.

 

[Harv]

Hmm. A long time ago, after finishing the Humans game on Average difficulty, Darza's advice for me was to learn to beat the game on Impossible starting with the Klackons. Maybe this is a good time to start.

 

[civvver]

I just struggle so much knowing when to start attacking enemies. I usually wait until I have amazing tech like nuetronium bombs and sublight engines so I can bomb them in one move. I think I wait way too long on impossible since you can't usually out produce when enemy has double your planets at this level.

Do you know how to difficulties modify the game? I know that higher difficulties increase your research costs but do they do anything else? Decrease enemy production costs or anything? Increase your maintenance costs?

 

[Harv]

I just struggle so much knowing when to start attacking enemies.

I have the same issue. I also have an issue of figuring out what to do after expanding until I hit a wall. Posting a game CFC-style helps me a lot.

Do you know how to difficulties modify the game?

I might have asked that question on different threads.

I know that higher difficulties increase your research costs

Average Difficulty: C = 30 N²
Hard Difficulty: C = 35 N²
Impossible Difficulty: C = 40 N²

C is the research cost, rounded down to the nearest 10. N is the technology level.

but do they do anything else?

I imagine the AI gets to cheat a little more and give themselves more of a head start or boost.

When I get home, I can fire up MOO1 and post up an initial save and a screen-shot indicating the initial position. This will be in approximately 8 hours.

 

[civvver]

How do they cheat though, do ships and tech cost less for them or do they get extra colony ships at level 1? Just wondering, it's not extremely crucial.

 

[civvver]

Argh, I played out another one last night/this afternoon, same setup. Was going much better this time as it seemed like every other race was at war and keeping each other in check- silicoids, sakaras, meklars and bulrathi all going at it. I was never first in pop either so vote was always split between two others but I'm still doing very well in production and planet count. Eventually some wards come, bulrathi are just impossible to invade with +25 troop rolls so I attacked meklars instead. First few planets fell with ease to my anti matter bombs but then they got some really advanced shields so I went back to research. The meklar kept launching attacks at me but only using plasma cannons and other junk so no threat. Unfortunately my missile tech sucks, I got stingers but that's the most advanced that's been available for research. Everything was going fine until the stupid meklars stumbled into nuetronium bombs. Now they can annihilate my colonies with ease. So dumb. It's just random luck they got it, they don't know to actually try and research better bombs. I managed to buy them off for now and am building a counter fleet but what looked like an easy win just got really difficult.

 

[Harv]

If you want to put up an initial save, I would be happy to take a look at it and let you know how I played the start. Otherwise, I can do the same when I get home.

 

[Darza]

civver, if you dont mind about cheap imba tech using by now - you should recall what one should always try to get a repulsor beam, as its one of absolute gamebreakers there. And fleet consisted of 6 different, but similar ships with it, to block planet's approaching.

 

[Harv]

Okay. I just rolled up a Huge Galaxy, Impossible Difficulty, with 5 Opponents.

We are located near the bottom-right corner of the Galaxy Map. If you hit Alt-M, we are 6 of 7 squares to the right, and 6 of 6 squares down. I will start a convention and call each of these squares a Sector, marked A to G from left to right, and 1 to 6 from top to bottom. So we are located in Sector F6.

One star is within Colony ship range. It is green.

Two stars are at a range of 4 Parsecs. They are Green and Yellow.

Three stars are at a range of 5 Parsecs. They are Green, Red, and Purple.

Two stars are at 6 Parsecs. They are both Red.

So we have a total of 8 systems we can explore right away. This is actually a pretty small number. We can send the Colony ship straight to the nearest star and hope it is NOT Orion. (1 in 107 probability!) Or we can wait three turns for a Scout to check it out first, at a cost of three more turns of waiting and paying maintenance.

Of course, if it is Orion, then there is always reload!

I have attached a zip file and uploaded a picture showing the start area.

 

[civvver]

I attached the save from my stopping point in my walkthrough game. I think I played a few more turns into it.

 

[Harv]

From the initial save I attached earlier, so far I have played 100 turns. It is a little late for a full after-action report. The Klackons have 21 systems and had 16 of 52 votes - not quite enough to block an election.

There is a chance! We just need a couple more game-breaking technologies. So far we have Terraforming 30 and Robotics 3 and we are just starting to put up Planetary Shields to hide under.

Included are saves from 2300, 2325, 2350, 2375, and 2400.

 

[Harv]

I am playing klackons, 5 opponents, and on hard and impossible is where I run into trouble. I can eek out wins if the enemy doesn't run away and keep themselves in check. Problem is at least half the time the psilons or silicoids will just dominate the galaxy, they'll have around 20 planets, I'll have 10 or so and everyone else like 5 cus the lesser races always suck at expanding like human, mrrshan and bulrathi. Average I can win always, just depends on how long it takes.

I recently rolled up a game at Huge / Hard / Five Opponents and ran into the Psilons on Turn 38 and they already had 8 Planets. I do not know how many Colony Ships they start off with.

My strategy for winning is usually

-Max factories out on my home world.

Uh....

Maxing factories prior building Colony Ships is not so good, as it slow you heavily, and keep population low.

Darza has it right. Claiming systems earlier is just better. You do not have to feel obligated to have 2 factories for every citizen. In the early game, the right time to build a colony ship is if there is a system to be colonized.

If there are more than one, then you can build some factories in between colony ships so that you can build one every 6 turns or better, perhaps.

On huge I do not need to build any extra scouts because there will be plenty of planets uncontested close by. I don't really care if I explore the whole map if I can't colonize it anyway.

My conversion process is still ongoing. I still do not produce enough scouts. You need to go through a conversion process also. In the early part of the game, you should have at least one scout for every system within scouting range that you or an opponent does not control Yes, scouts cost money to build. And yes, scouts cost money to maintain. And yes, the 1BC maintenance seems to get rounded up on every world you control and really costs 3BC or more and that can be used to build up factories. But......

1. Knowledge is Power. You see your part of the galaxy earlier. You can set up your near-term objectives sooner. Think of the BC's as an investment in information.

2. Your opponents start off with a bunch of Colony Ships. So if your Scout ship is there first, the Colony Ship gets sent home instead of building another colony. In the best case, you get to colonize the world. In the worst case, your opponent has to come back with armed ships to claim the system and you slow them down.

3. You send their scouts home and your opponent does not get to scan the system. So when you colonize a system your opponent has not scanned, they cannot send transports to that system.

4. You might beat your opponent to an Artifacts world and claim the free technology. If this happens, you have certainly paid for your investment.

-Expand aggressively to 6 or so planets ignoring poor and hostile ones.

Building the factories first is not expanding aggressively.

There are a few stages of expansion. The first is how many systems you can claim without any extended range. There might be a pause for researching the extended range. Then continue expanding until reaching an opponent. Build a spy network quickly and see if he can reach you. Then expand in a different direction and reach another opponent. Finally you run out of free planets to grab and you have to figure out how to defend them.

-New planets also max factories, transferring colonists between as necessary.

You can also have these planets staring on research. Deuterium Fuel Cells comes to mind. Being Klackons, the new planets are productive almost immediately.

In the mean time I'm letting Kholdan hit max factories before building anything else. I feel like to take advantage of the klackons production it's best for setting up factories fast.

There are many ways to take advantage of this. That is why the Klackons are such a good race, if not the best.

Once Kholdan hits ~75 pop I'll start shuttling colonists off it.

This is a pretty good compromise for the mid-term. For a while I have been picking a number of factories to build, like 99, 119, or 139. We can bleed off the extra population to other colonies.

The tech choice ends up being just one fuel cell, the range 5 one for 1250 which is not so good, I'd rather get the cheap range 4 and leapfrog to range 6 but so be it.

You should be able to get anywhere with Range 5. You should not need Range 6 unless there is no choice. I find Range 4 or Range 5 a tough choice - and I make that choice based on the map. There was a game I was able to get everywhere on Range 4. So you can research your tech and if you get Nuclear Engines, then eventually your ships will move faster. Otherwise, you can just move on.

Here is another trick you may or may not know. If you research Planetology 3 and Construction 8, then you will be able to build Large-size ships with Standard Colony Base. (I think my numbers are correct - It is not very much technology.) So with this and Hydrogen Fuel Cells, you can send Colony Ships 7 Parsecs away.