If you could give one bit of advice to someone?

[wilhil]

I do not play much pbw, only doing one with star trek mod, never done stock, and I only play ai on solo, fine with bonuses and stuff to the ai, so it is always on hardest, I still consider myself a noob as I have not yet beated human players.

but at the same time on that pic, I was sort of thinking the same, I would build more space yards, with resources like that, it is good and fun to stockpile for a pic, but unless it was a game to see how much you can stockpile, I would be building like 100 ships a turn!

if you cant beat your opponent through technology and superior ships, you can usually do it through numbers! and with resource numbers like that, you should win!

if I can ask, is that a stock game? I can not think how you can have so much coming in with that ammount of systems that is showing on the pic....

[Parasite]

Atrocities said:
Expand - Exploit - Exterminate - and Explore.

Besides this advice, I would say be friends with everyone but your enemies. When you attack the others, kill them fast, consolidate and move to the next enemy. Long wars benefit noone, only keep you alive when you should be expanding.

[dogscoff]

/me selects random quote for the "seven habits of highly effective pirates":

Rule 37: There is no overkill. There is 'open fire' and 'time to reload'.

[Fyron]

douglas said:
For stock, "min/max your empire".

...according to the principles of this article. Having less than 30% aggressiveness and defensiveness racial bonuses is asking to lose due to poor stock combat bonus system...

[Starhawk]

Not entirely true Parasite Long wars benefit you if your winning because it helps you EXPAND (via conquering/glassing enemy planets) and keeps your enemy from expanding.

If on the other hand you are losing a long war (or are losing enough numbers/resources that another enemy will overwhelm you) then you need to switch to a defensive strategy that employs lots of mines and warp point choke hold defenses.

For example in my one game I had 3 larger AI empires attacking my empire (fortunately at that point only 2 warp points led to my empire) so I laid Gigantic minefields and placed my warfleets at each warp point as I waited to rebuild.

If I lost a system I would simply blockade the next, sure i lost 8 star systems in 5 years and about 80 ships (which was a HUGE chunk of my navy) but in the end i whittled them down with attrition until their invasion fleets basically just ran out of steam and had to repair.

While they did that I rebuilt and launched a MASSIVE assult against the Cue Cappa systems, and in 20 years I not only retook my space but expanded to twice my original size (and the one enemy was totally washed away in the counter assault).


It all depends on how you play a long war out.

[DeKaye]

Douglas said "For stock, "min/max your empire"."
Please tell me what you mean by this. Thanks!
Fuzzie

[Fyron]

Not entirely true Parasite Long wars benefit you if your winning because it helps you EXPAND (via conquering/glassing enemy planets) and keeps your enemy from expanding.

PBW experience leads me to agree with Parasite in this case. Prolonged wars hurt you in the long run because you expand more slowly than the rest of the empires, thus leaving you behind even if you win. Fast early wars put you way ahead, but slow ones put you behind.

[Fyron]

DeKaye, please reference this post:

Imperator Fyron said:

...according to the principles of this article. Having less than 30% aggressiveness and defensiveness racial bonuses is asking to lose due to poor stock combat bonus system...

[DeKaye]

Sorry Fyron. Do not know what you mean. Do you want me to look at your refered to post, or to quote like you did? If you mean quoting, how do I do it? Still learning the how to's of message boarding.

Fuzzie

PS: is there more to this post than meets the eye? Some of the posts are confusing. It's like there is a "conversation" going on, but all the messages are not listed.

[DeKaye]

I haven't been playing against other humans for very long, but I have learned that it is a very good idea to learn all you can about your enemy and even your allies. Then do not stop "keeping a tab" on how they fight, their weapon choices, etc. They will probably change on you. So always try to know what everyone else is up to. This is not easy to do, but it is worth trying.

Fuzzie