Hey there Empire fiends!
I have decided to start a game with high technology and 5000 racepoints to see what kind of end-game designs I could come up with... Well the answer is SWEET! Upon discovering mounts (thanks for the help) I was able to try several designs. I usually play temporal technology and found that in the high-end game it is probably the most powerful tech (at least for me)... It's just the weapons, combined with mounts, are so powerful it's almost too easy to defeat other race's dreadnoughts in a 1-1 battle. For example, I have found the combination of heavy and massive mounts + shield accelerators + tachyon cannons are so powerful I can usually destroy an enemy dreadnought in 3-5 turns! Time distortion burst is extremely powerful with 4x dmg to shields and you don't have to use the shield accelerators taking up space. So you can have even more weapons. Well, I will discuss my strategies for owning the game with temporal in the end-game...
Started with, ancient tech, temporal tech, advanced storage. Artisans. Increased space combat modifiers and maintenance/repair/construction. 1 Homeworld, AI bonus.
1) Stellar manipulation is your friend!
The first thing I did was to create a stellar star destroyer (nebulae). They are fairly cheap as manipulators go, and with my temporal space yard I cranked plenty out in the first couple turns. I was ancient race so I quickly found out where the enemy was starting. As homeworlds don't start with system shields I was able to wipe out half the AI's fledling empires in the first encounters. But I was playing HUGE galaxy so I couldn't get there fast enough to wipe out all of them. Ships get destroyed when you destroy a star so I had to rebuild them over and over and send them out, not quick enough...
2) Alliances - not sure about them
I first made alliances really quickly, thinking I could be the great "peacekeepers" of the galaxy. Turns out I had partners with almost all of the enemy AI and they proceeded to abuse their partner privileges, by colonizing right next to my home system! So I proceeded to use tactic (1) to clear out those systems. It worked great! I then quickly constructed ringworlds in the empty systems (clear nebulae/create star/create ringworld). It takes a long time, but if you protect your ships with fleets, the enemy will usually bypass you in an empty system. It is well worth it as a full ringworld will give you +100% production due to population.
3) Bases
Star bases and battle stations protecting your colonies are the ultimate protection with temporal. With their superb mounts, you can up your dmg considerably with the temp weps... I use time distortion bursts (you can fill a starbase with tons of these while still having plenty of room for shields/whatnot) or a combo of shield accelerators / beam weps (more can fit) or tachyon cannons (insane almost 1000dmg!). I had one starbase destroy a fleet of psychic ships (12 dreadnoughts) with 10 or so time distortion bursts.
4) Attack ships
Using the same idea as the bases, you can create a formidable mixed fleet. I typically use a mixed fleet of dreadnoughts, battleships, and cruisers. On my dreads I have shield accelerators and tachyons for terrible dmg w/mounts. On my battleships I usually have shield accelerators with beams. I tend to not use the advanced shield and armor skipping weapons (null space, etc.) because they have a terrible refire rate. Shield accelerators can do 900dmg with huge mounts and fire every turn while tachyon cannons can do massive dmg every 2 turns. Standard beam weps can do about half (or 1/3 I forget) of the cannons but fire every turn, good to keep armor down on organics. On my cruisers, I just load up on seekers. I tend not to use fighters unless in a fleet battle. I also tend not to use troops as my homeworlds and ringworlds produce way too much resources for me to keep up with anyways.
5) Planet attacking
Most planets in the end game from empires that start far away from you have a huge number of weapons platforms on their planets. The best strategy I have found for defeating these is to use fleets of seeker-laden cruisers to overwhelm their point defense. 15+ cruisers with 5 capital ship missiles each have enough fire power to overwhelm the enemy point defense and deliver significant enough dmg. Add even more cruisers 25+ and the combat will be pretty short. ALWAYS use tactical when doing this, as I usually put 1 or 2 other weps besides the seekers to keep the fleet somewhat balanced. If you hit strategic, even using maximum wep range, they will fire their cruisers and then stupidly go up to the planet to use their shorter range weps, thereby destroying themselves to massive mount weapons platforms. I lost a fleet of 45+ ships doing this on a heavily defended planet because I got cocky.
6) Colonizing OutPosts
I tend to build up my home system and the 3 or 4 that surround it and use atmosphere converters to boost my pop. Trust me it's better if you want to keep alliances while being #1 score as the ai won't see you as an expansionist. In fact my population is greater than any other empire while I only hold 5 systems and they hold over 20 each.
IF you like to build outPosts or HAVE to for long range conquests I suggest finding a star and building a ringworld. You can defend one world better than 10 colonies, and it will have a 100% production rate after a while, great for building quick cruiser fleets. With temporal space yards it won't take long to build the ships necessary to make the components (1.9 years).
My general strategy is scorched earth. I heavily populate a couple systems, build up ridiculous defenses, then create a buffer around my empire with nebulae. Under differing circumstances I could see black holes, but you can build alot of defense bases over warp points in a nebulae system (watch the AI destroy themselves on it). When I conquer a system I then destroy it, to prevent my enemies from ever occupying it again...
Hitches in my strategy:
If you don't use the weapons right you could be meat for the grinder when facing crystalline/organic/psychic races.
If you don't build resource gatherers first, your high costing temporal components (both production and maintenance wise) will drain your empire quick!
Beware of exploding stars! I had a star explode in my homeworld system, it destroyed half my empire... of course there is a ringworld there now
The only problem I can't get around is weapons platforms using massive mounts on seekers. I can't seem to destroy this one planet which has more wp than I can count, I usually would build up a massive fleet of seeker-cruisers, but their seekers have a range of 19-20! So I can't even get close. I guess I will just have to have a massive fleet of VERY heavy hitting dreadnoughts, with some seeker support to take out those wp's.
TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK
Temporal Strategy
Linear Mode
