Yang Nuked Me

[Cutlass]

and i lost most of my navy and part of my air force. even though the atrocity prohibit had not been lifted. is that normal?

he was being pushed back in a war, but it was a long way short of "lost". And there is no one else to join in war against him because of the atrocity. he has pretty close to beaten santiago, and santiago reduced miriam to 1 sea habitat a century earlier. the others are gone.

 

[NwabudikeMorgan]

In that case i would not be surprised, the only reason an AI won't nuke you is if they know they'll get gangbanged, but if they are already at war with everyone, and miriam is basically out of it, there's no reason for them to care about the repercussions.

 

[GooglyBoogly]

Luckily for us, the AI is smart in those regards - Yang doesn't let a little thing like being labeled for an 'atrocity' stop him from wiping out the enemy - good on him.

 

[Sarcasticon]

Since the other AI's are so weak, what keeps you from sending a few nukes Yang's way? The essence of war lies in either striking hard first, or go for extreme measures of retaliation.

 

[NwabudikeMorgan]

indeed, I had a game tonight on Librarian (first try on that level) and I wiped the floor with the AI's but Morgan and Dierdre both got PB's :-( Dierdre didn't use hers because i gave her 2000 energy or something obscene like that, but morgan was moving his to the fron to use it ( I was govenor so i could see where it was, and I had to sacrifice a couple of choppers to plow through the defenses and take it out.

 

[Cutlass]

I'll nuke him back. I have his datalinks so infiltrated I'll know when he builds another. But I haven't built one yet, and they take a godawful amount of time to build. I'm playing Morgan, who seems to really suck at offensive war because of the "units away" penalty. And I finally found a combination that lets the economy grow decently.

 

[Sarcasticon]

As Morgan you should be able to build up quite an energy reserve, allowing you to accelerate the build towards the end...

"People have prayed for far weirder things than the falling of nuclear rain"

 

[sendos]

Oh dear. When I was Morgan, Yang had some Fission Planet Busters and he didn't use them. He was too late and I launched my blitzkrieg on his mainland.
yeah, the aim in war is to strike first otherwise be struck. Most of my wars, the AI factions start it, and then when I dominate 'em, they call for truce or surrender.

Instead of using PB's USE FUNGAL MISSILES. There's no atrocity there. It is funny seeing the factions being destroyed by native life. Make sure they are singularity, that way, theres more fungus.

 

[Cutlass]

I don't think i've had a game go so long that I ever could build those. It's kill or be killed much earlier.

I picked Morgan because I wanted a long building game because I didn't remember everything about the late stages of the game.

In this past game (I flaked off yesterday and spent all day and night playing till it was over) I drove a wedge between Yang's "heartland" and the region where he was finishing off Santiago and just Blitzed his core bases as hard as I could manage. That kept him enough on the defense that he never finished another planet buster, but it meant that I had to finish the game on a complete war footing, because Yang would just not make peace. We had a truce briefly because I needed a breathing space to consolidate, but he sneak attacked almost immediately.

 

[NwabudikeMorgan]

play on bigger map sizes, that almost always makes the games go on longer.

 

[Sarcasticon]

Hm, librarian difficulty on the smallest map is brutal. I can't keep up with most of the AI's and as soon as they see me, they relentlessly squeeze me for energy and tech. In addition Yang and Myriam both have far stronger military units than mine, even if I focus on military research from the start.
I'll have a try with a slightly larger map, hopefully that gives me a bit more time to prepare.

Does the AI get a headstart in energy and/or tech at librarian difficulty?

 

[vyeh]

At Librarian difficulty, the only differences are the factional characteristics.

Yang has a + 1 growth bonus and a + 1 industry bonus.

The growth bonus means bases grow 10% faster, which translates to bases which produce more energy and minerals (because they have more workers). More energy becomes more tech. The industry bonus means Yang can build units faster.

Miriam has a built in 25% bonus in attacking units, which means her units are stronger when attacking. Her energy should be the same. She does have a probe advantage which might translate into tech. But generally she should be behind in tech with a 20% resarch handicap and she can't accumulate research points the first 10 turns.

 

[NwabudikeMorgan]

I have found the same thing on higher difficulties that the AI expands relentlessly and then attacks once there is nowhere to go. The advanced start, which starts the game from wither 2030, 2060, or 2080 helps I found, because you usually start with 3,4,5 bases on these times, which is more than I would have built that early, so I can actually compete with the Ai's rexing.

 

[Sarcasticon]

That's exactly what happened to me; even though I could sometimes keep up and build up to 6 bases, I was quickly overrun by 3-4 AI's at a time. Unless the idea is to give in to their every demand and hope that doesn't give them such an additional lead in research that you can't recover from it.

 

[NwabudikeMorgan]

As i've said in other threads it is also very very very helpful to set youe SE choices to match your neighbors. for example: you're Spartans, and you've got yang, Lal, Zakharov, and Deirdre nearby, but Morgan and miriam are farther away, or on the other side of AI's , you just set you Econ to green Values to knowledge, and then choose between police state and Democracy. Gaians will love you, and should not make many demands, same goes for the University, and then you either team with Lal and kill yang or vice versa. I've found I can win with just about and SE choices except free market and fundamentalism, so Morgan and Miriam I usually war with and take their crap. The rest I just cater to the likes of my neighbors, because there is a good strategy for any choice. ie: values. If POWER, build units and take somebody over, if KNOWLEDGE turtle and tech up, then take someone over with superior weaponry, if WEALTH (which none of the AI's like anyhow) mind control probes are your friend.

 

[sendos]

I never worry about fighting a faction really, but NwabudikeMorgan opens up a good point: be friends with factions you are nearby by having relative values and hate factions which are far away. In one of my game as the drones, Yang declared war on me and they were away and didn't do a thing.

My point to dealing with threats is this: Give factions tech that doesn't contain new weapons or armour, if you do, you'd kick yourself once you attack the faction, because their new weapons and armour will help defeat you. You need to research each faction with the handy AC booklet (strangely I have 2, since I bought AC original then AC with crossfire): if Morganites give you threats don't be threatened! They're a weak faction in military, due to support, Free Market and if they choose wealth, typically they're peacemongers. If Gaians threaten you, just boost your soldiers' morale and get Neural Amplifer, so if they attack, you should have a good chance of winning and quit using Free Market otherwise your attack against natives is weakened by 30%. If Spartans, Hive, Peacekeepers or Believers threaten you, if they demand about 200 credits, then give it to them, if its higher than about 800 or has a high percentage of your remaining money, refuse, if they want tech containing weapons, refuse, and fight. if University threaten you, they're weak too, if you use probe teams and natives--refuse and fight.
For other factions in crossfire: if drones threaten you, they're fairly tough since their production is very good, fight them if you are ready (in fact that goes to all factions).
I never give factions my tech or money: it's either trade or forget it.
We're actually supposed to be talking about Fusion Planet Busters anyway, so, to know if they are building one:
Infiltrate datalinks
Get Empath Guild (recommended)
Be governor (if my recommended fails)
Empath guild and being governor place an infiltraitor in every base and faction. Use probe teams to cause severe blow on PB production or attack the base, and they'll eventually change production.

 

[NwabudikeMorgan]

The Ai has one flaw I exploit regularily to stop PB production in a city, which I just used against yan about 15 minutes ago: send a plane near the city, so you can see the defenders, then just attack i you have better weapons tech, killing the defenders and the city's production will auto-switch to a garrison unit. It's cheap but the Ai doesn't know to just move a garrison from a different city, it wants one there, now built there.

 

[Sarcasticon]

Very clever tactic that one

Sendos: with "AC booklet" do you mean the manual? I bought my copy second-hand only a year ago, so no idea what is normally included or not.
By the way, that Alien Crossfire release is a real treasure, prices over $100 for a copy.

 

[NwabudikeMorgan]

Im pretty sure he does, and holy moly is that booklet (manual) helpful, it's like the datalinks X 5

 

[sendos]

Very clever tactic that one

Sendos: with "AC booklet" do you mean the manual? I bought my copy second-hand only a year ago, so no idea what is normally included or not.
By the way, that Alien Crossfire release is a real treasure, prices over $100 for a copy.

Yes. Woah, that much for one?! No wonder, they're getting rare. Low supply = high cost

The Ai has one flaw I exploit regularily to stop PB production in a city, which I just used against yan about 15 minutes ago: send a plane near the city, so you can see the defenders, then just attack i you have better weapons tech, killing the defenders and the city's production will auto-switch to a garrison unit. It's cheap but the Ai doesn't know to just move a garrison from a different city, it wants one there, now built there.

I do exactly the same, but what if the defending unit had AAA and the base had aerospace complex?