Vineheart01
If you decide to give the game another try, this is something I wrote earlier on my favorite race picks:
"I find creative and telepathic together are unbeatable in single player. Using those, I've never even come close to losing a game on the impossible setting. The 6 points left over allows for a wide variety of other choices, including the unification government. These other picks vary depending on my mood when starting a game. I usually pick low gravity, negative spying and ground attack settings to get the -10. Low gravity is quickly made up with the gravity tech. With creative, there's not much of a reason to spy. And telepathic negates the need of troops (I rely upon my fleets to prevent others landing on my planets).
For strategy I usually spam colony ships as fast as possible till I meet up with one of the repulsives (these are races you cant practice diplomacy with, there are usually at least one of these in a game). Then I switch to warship building. That seems to work well, though sometimes I have to resort to bribes till I get a fleet up and running. I do trade and research treaties with the aliens I can, for as long as possible."
With creative, you can build anything you want and it's a good way to start out in the game and give everything a try. It's also easier to strategize since you can use the best and are not limited by techs.
Early on I rely mostly upon interceptors and missiles if I have to fight. The beams with the low computer ratings fail to hit much. I try not to fight wars at that point. The military techs I go for first are better computers, work up to 75% initially, mass drivers and fusion beams, with armor piercing and autofire for the former and enveloping for the latter (You don't get all the specials for a weapon when the weapon is initially researched, but they come later after you have researched 1 or 2 levels higher up in the same subject. Same for missile specials. You get MIRV after researching the next 2 levels in the category the missiles are in, chemistry, I think it is). Other techs I go for early are battle scanner and battle pods and augmented engines. I usually bypass using lasers since they cost more in space than mass drivers, but don't do as much damage (this with all the specials), and being earlier in the tech tree, they miss more (earlier weapons are not as accurate as later ones, given the same ship computer). You need a combined hit percentage of about 125% to hit well with beams, so the 3rd level computer, 75%, and battle scanner, 50%, I consider the bare minimum for serious offense. I then build several types of ship and each has a specific role. My early capital ships are cruisers with destroyers in a support role.
Cruiser type 1: Mainly armed with heavy mass drivers with 1 or 2 regular ones for missile and fighter defense. All weapons have armor piercing and autofire. Ship specials: battle scanner, battle pods.
Cruiser type 2: Heavy fusion beams with either 1 or 2 regular mass drivers or regular fusion beams for defense, whatever works best with the space. The mass drivers have AP & AF and the fusion beams all the weapon specials. Ship specials: augmented engines, battle scanner and battle pods.
Cruiser type 3: this is the fighter/missile armed ships.They can be all fighter armed, missile armed or a combo of the two. It depends on what works best with the space when I design them. I use 2 shot missile batteries to get a larger missile salvo per round. 2 rounds per battery is enough since battles are usually over by then. The missiles are the best I have with MIRV and fast specials. They also get 1 regular mass driver with AP & AF for defense. Ship specials: battle pods and fast missile racks for ships carrying missiles.
Destroyer type 1: this is armed entirely with regular mass drivers with AP & AF and is for attacking fighters and missiles. Ship specials: augmented engines, battle scanner & battle pods. I call these point defense ships, or PD.
I rely mostly on the beams ships with 1 or 2 fighter/missiles ships per fleet. When a battle begins, I scan the other's ships to see what they got and see what would be the best way to tackle them. The fusion beam cruisers are to peel shields initially and they need to close quickly so the fusion beams can do max damage, which is why they get the augmented engines. After they reduce the shields, I fire the heavy mass drivers of mass driver cruisers. Their armor piercing allows them to bypass the ship armor and destroy it twice as fast and they can do this at long range. Even if you cant destroy the ship or orbital on that round, mass drivers are good at reducing its ability to counter attack by destroying systems and weapons, like computers, battle scanners and number of weapons. That's a huge advantage from the armor piecing weapon special. The PD ships are there to prevent fighters and missiles getting to my ships. I tend to hold them back somewhat till I can use them if the opponent has a strong heavy beam suite since they are easily knocked out because of their small size. The fighter/missile ships are there as insurance. I prefer beams to these as fighters and missiles take a round or two to reach their targets and I like to neutralize their fleet on the first turn. So what I cant take out in the 1st round, then I use the missiles and fighters on. This is usually the orbitals and planet based weapons they are used on.
If I have to war very early on before I can build the sort of ships described above, then I build destroyers armed mostly with interceptors and whatever else I can fit into with the tech I have. As many of them as I can.
That is for fighting the other alien races. For fighting the monsters on those special systems, I use destroyers armed mostly with interceptors. With battle pods, I can usually fit a couple of interceptors and what space is left over goes to missiles. Ship specials: battle pods. Use about 10-12 per monster attacked. They're cheap to build and being destroyers, any planet can build them. The battle is over in 2-3 rounds and the most destroyers in a battle I've lost to monsters is 6. Bring along 1 or more colony ships or the other aliens might beat you the planets after you destroyed the monsters. The survivors of these destroyers usually get upgraded into PD destroyers once the monsters have been taken care of. For the Guardian, see the thread on this site linked below:
Destroying the Orion Guardian using destroyers and missiles
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=362101
I've tried that strategy out and it definitely works. But not always. Sometimes you cant get any ships in the right position to deliver that final blow with the EMG missiles (you need to have them right next to a side of the guardian where the shields are down so that when you fire them they hit the guardian right then, and are not delayed a turn. Otherwise, the shields go partially back up and the missiles fail to damage). Giving the EMG armed destroyers augmented engines makes it more likely they will be able to get into position, but they cant carry as many missiles, so you will need about twice as many destroyers.
You don't need to destroy the guardian and get its techs to win the game. I've won plenty where one of the other races got the guardian. I just got the techs from that race.
For defending against Antarans, I found the early ships didn't work well. Especially since the Antarans will always attack first. Better to rely upon planet defenses and orbitals. A missile base-fighter garrison-star base combo will handle the early Antaran attacks. Later on, ground batteries and battlestations extend that enough to handle 1 or 2 Antaran cruisers.
