I lost again... Whats up?

Advent

from Sins Forums

Hey everyone

My first few games were so easy it hurt my intelligence. Locked teams and normal AI's. I crushed them without difficult, so in an attempt to make it harder, I went up to Hard Aggressors with open teams.

I gotta say thats like jumping from one stupidity to another. My first game like that ended with 4 AI's ganging up on me, forcing me to surrender. Second I was like "Okay, I'll just grap these planets fast, that way I have X larger income, and only 2 attackable planets (out of about 6)" but as it turns out, one AI 1 made it to the last planet I wanted before me. We fought it out, but I was forced to retreate. I become solid friends with my northern nabo, who used my one exposed planet as a travel through. So I was thinking "alright, my northern ally has my back, I'll fight it out with AI 1", so I went on to attack him, 2-4 times, everytime getting closer to break him. Mind you that all the time I got requests from all the other AI's to attack my ally, which spelled war in my mind between him and them.

Now suddenly I get jumped by AI 2 on my northern exposed planet, but comfident my ally and my planetary defense can hold them off, I contiue my fighting AI 1. As my planetary defenses up north are crumpling, I take a closer look, and sure enough, my ally is allied to him aswell, so he won't help me. I find this really odd as that guy had asked me repeatively to attack my ally. Never the less I go north, bust him out of there, no biggy. This goes back and further, with more and more AI's joining in on me, till at least I get overwhelmed. I lose both my planets to fleets I couldn't have matched even 4 hours later. Making my final stand on the astroide one phase lane from my homeworld, I have 3 Capital ships, lvl 10, 9 and 9. I had 4 oh this "make big sphese so we can all share the incoming damage", 15 of those cruisers that hurt like hell, about 15 Drone Cruisers, and a good size army of those Javelin equevilents.

As my antimatter runs out and my other planets (the ones that was cut off by the loss of the north planet) fall (resulting in alot of research advances being cut), my capital ships are finally alone, falling slowing, one after the other.

 

My question is, what could i have done? am I doing something wrong? I used all my cash on weapon and defense research and fleet blostering (ofc I had trade post and that). I just feel there is something I'm missing.

40,992 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
if nothing else, take it for a little sad story of the demise of the Advent
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
you really have to make a move for diplomacy.

Especially the first couple of missions you recieve. You can't just do the missions that happen to coincide with your plans. You have to let the missions determine your plans. It's unfortunate, but true. There's talk about the diplomacy system getting a little more developed in 1.1

The other thing is don't wait too long to begin producing carriers and heavy cruisers. About the time the AI starts spamming utility cruisers, you need to tech up too.

HOpe this helps.
CursorFX - Customize your Windows cursor
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
It sounds to me like you made a "run for the corner"... But lost. The initial thought was a good one, but when you got beat to it... That was a critical juncture in the game. Next time make a special save right there so you can play out differing strats and see what would have worked...

As far as the game you post about:

1- I think you held on to your original idea too long. Once the possibility of getting that key planet was out it would be time to look at defending the lane(s) and building up. By trying to take the planet by force, you cost yourself alot of time and energy that not only didn't achieve the planet, but cost you the forces you needed to deal with the real threat that came later.

2- Never trust the AI. It's not that they aren't nice, or uncaring or incapable of keeping their word... They just don't get it. When faced between choosing sides, they play Switzerland and stay neutral. This cost you alot and rendered your strategy useless, without having to do a thing. Hopefully they address this in 1.1... It would be nice for a faction to have to choose specifically whether they are allied or neutral. If two factions are allied with one, they should have to either break the alliance or get the allied partner to choose a side. By keeping the alliance with both, the faction was rendered useless to either side, and really to his/herself.

3- You were asked to go after your "ally"... by how many factions? If 3 are asking you to take out one, and your defensive position is tenable at best does it make sense to try to have three potential allies verses one??? Was your ally a smaller power than you or larger??? He achieved his goal of getting you gone without firing a shot AND being your friend. Learn from that, and use it to your advantage, not the other way around.

4- Welcome to hard. If you learned from this game, you really didn't lose.

If it were me... not knowing how many planets/factions etc. and having to make a few guesses...

1- I don't go for the blocker planet unless I KNOW I can win. If it means waiting I wait. If it means getting the pirates to run rampant over them, I pay. If it means getting the other factions to go get em, I do whatever I can to get them to go after them. All the while, I tech and build up as best I can. When i hit them, I hit them HARD. One shot. That's all I can afford, so I make it count. After I have the planet I want peace ASAP. I want time to get everything in order and get set up.

2- I don't ally with the race on my backside, especially if he is smaller than me. I always try to ally with powers on the other side of the world, at least a faction away from me. It makes opponents have to split their fleets and fight on two fronts. Plus, should something happen... like say, oh, they get allied with the enemy, it doesn't hurt as bad.

3- I pick my dance partner early. Some factions are more reasonable with their missions than others. I pay attention to who they dislike, and I steer clear of them. I make sure we have common enemies. I work at making sure I take planets faster than he does. When the end comes, and we're the only two left standing, I better have the bigger stick.

4- Ship selection. I don't know how you build fleets, but I usually go big and bad with alot of missile and bomber support. It's not uncommon for me to have 6 CapShips in my main fleet. I always have at least two with complimenting abilities. In battles, I target the CapShips first. The enemy hates when his CSs go down, and they'll run and scatter. It takes them some time before they can come back at me again. I make sure I bring along alot of cannon fodder too. I want them right up front in the way of the enemy. I want the enemy to concentrate on them. I COUNT on losing them... I don't play spam games, where I spam one type of ship to easy win, so keeping the fleet in order and manually directing it in battle is a must.

My fingers hurt now, so I'll stop typing. I'm curious to hear what happens if you replay the galaxy map on the same settings knowing what you know now...

T
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Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Hi!
am I doing something wrong?

Yep. You started with unlocked teams in a game where diplomacy for a human player is essentialy broken. I just hope this issue will be addressed in 1.1.

There's also a longer, less pessimistic answer to your question, on how to go around that. But while AIs in this game can do what you can't :( , better lock teams and save you a lot of frustration.

BR, Iztok
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Go locked teams and in a 1h vs 3ai only go with 1-2 hard and 1 norm -3ai in hard mode is a tough nut to crack as they seem to spam fleets with ease out of nowhere.

Also, I think the AI cheats. I've seen caps with no shields and miniscule hull/armor suddenly boost themself to 800 shields and phase away -they were solo and boosted X-(

In the words of the great Admiral Ackbar,
"We've got to give those fighters more time, concentrate all fire on that Super Star Destroyer"

Take out the enemy capitals
take out the high DPS heavy cruisers, light frigs, range ships -in order, kill their damage potential.
kill all fleet support cruisers and drone boats -don't bother sending anti-fighter/bomber ships against fighters, put their fire on the ships themselves.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
It's not just the AI diplomacy. Something like this happened to me in online play. There were three players left, and one was clearly winning. He had a fleet of about 9 high level dunovs all with shield restore, as well as various frigates for supporting fire. I decided on a strategy and convinced the other player to help me accomplish it. The whole time spent on my hit-and-run strategy, the other guy kept hanging back, or just being a little slow to the battle. I chalked this up to a lack of skill. I watched the replay afterward, and it turns out it he wasn't inexperienced, he was just allied with the other guy.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Its ashame they didnt adopt the standard diplomacy stuff from gal civ..with adding in the missions... You might actually know wtf is going on with each computer AI and whos tied to who. At the moment its piss poor pure computer gangbang vs human diplomacy programing
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
9 remote repping BS's... Spider Tanking in SINS??? Dude must be a TRI player from eve, they are damn good at that.

OMG... I got a +1 Karma. /shocked. ATLAS members in EVE would be so shocked. lolz
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
i cant offer much since i havent beat that number of hard ai's yet either. that game will happen this weekend. i definately agree with mixing the ai skills at first. set there colors so you can easily remember them. green:easy orange:moderate red:hard. then at a glance you will know the skills you are dealing with. once you get better, then mix all the colors and icons up.