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originalbork
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Guys,
If you are playing pre-warp, organic, 7 opponents on impossible you should be finishing between 120-150 turns. The only weapons you need to exterminate the computer are mirved emgs. Granted you will use other weapons but the first bb with emg and cl3 shields will be better than most any ship the computer will throw at you for the rest of the game.
The computer is so bad that the battleships you build late barely make the fight.
The entire key is to understanding the breaking points in the game and timing production of your ships to come out 1 turn after gettting key tech.
If you wonder about all the particulars, go play MP on Kali, you will learn more about MOO2 than you ever dreamed.
I was a serious addict a few years back and can tell you that this thread is purely on rookie level.
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originalbork
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Forget about the run I've given you the one thing you will need to do. Play MP for one month and you will acquire the skills you don't have.
Here are a couple other things that all of you have been missing.
1. In v1.31 Creative is slow and not a good choic at all in prewarp.
2. Unification is king here are two good races.
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originalbork
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oops hit a bad button
Uni, Aqua, Rich, Larg, +2 Prod.
Uni Tol +1 Pro
Add the negs yourself. Rep is a given
3. Learn to pop farm.
4. Always take Battle Scanners.
5. SP only, never build anything but BB's you get the most bang for the command points.
6. Having to tax at 50% is great. Your fleet is huge.
7. Missile's should be 2 shots only. Fast heavy to eat up Pd, Fast, Heavy, eccm (if they have ecm), mirv and finally all mods and emg late. EMG will let you capture or destroy their fleet with ease.
8. Time production of your first and subsequent BB's with a key tech gain. For Example time production right after you get Cl 3 which means your mass drivers then have autofire. You will need to to redesign the ship with 1 turn of production to go.
9. Worry about growth first, research second, fleet third.
The hardest part of doing it as fast as I did was having streams of transports rolling forward because running out of those could slow the onslaught. Once you captured something you needed to get that SB up right away to stretch your supply line.
To give you an idea in one on one games on Kali you needed to be ready to face a nasty laser bb between turn 45-50 in an ave game if you had wormholes connecting you.
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vmxa1
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Oviedo, Fl
Nov 2001
time: 21:17
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Originally posted by originalbork
"Uni, Aqua, Rich, Larg, +2 Prod.
Uni Tol +1 Pro
Add the negs yourself. Rep is a given"
I have played them all and you can drop the uni and do something else and be just fine in SP. I haved used repulsive many times and it is only a given in MP as you will not be making friends, it will hurt you in SP.
"3. Learn to pop farm.
4. Always take Battle Scanners.
5. SP only, never build anything but BB's you get the most bang for the command points.
6. Having to tax at 50% is great. Your fleet is huge.
7. Missile's should be 2 shots only. Fast heavy to eat up Pd, Fast, Heavy, eccm (if they have ecm), mirv and finally all mods and emg late. EMG will let you capture or destroy their fleet with ease.
8. Time production of your first and subsequent BB's with a key tech gain. For Example time production right after you get Cl 3 which means your mass drivers then have autofire. You will need to to redesign the ship with 1 turn of production to go.
9. Worry about growth first, research second, fleet third."
Is there something here that is not well known? Well any statement that involves always is suspect.
"To give you an idea in one on one games on Kali you needed to be ready to face a nasty laser bb between turn 45-50 in an ave game if you had wormholes connecting you. "
I am not concerned about Kali as I am not going to be playing any MP. You will not be seeing any BB's in turn 50 on any SP game with prewarp. In fact I do not see how you could unless you play with advanced tech. No one can build a BB from scratch in 50 turns. In adv tech anyone showing up will not be able to do anything execpt blockade as you start with a battle station. You will have BB as well, so whats the problem?
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originalbork
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First I should say Kali tourney games were ave tech.
Second, you tax at 50% when your fleet is big. Not for money.
Third, always take battle scanners unless you missile blitz a single opponent (1 on 1). If you don't you won't have the computers to protect yourself from a quality missile attack later. As that is exceedingly risky, because 2 well equiped destroyers with lasers and scanners can take care of an early missile blitz, always take scanners.
Last, I learned more in my first week on ten then I did in a 2 months playing SP. Almost nothing in SP transfers over. Ship design doesn't because the computer doesn't build a decent ship. Fleet design doesn't because the computer has no rhyme or reason to their fleet design. Build order obviously doesn't as yours and mine aren't remotely close. Having 12 pop when you did would be laughable in MP. That race is designed to explode not go on a level incline as you set out to do. As I said pop first, tech second, fleet third. You went tech first.
You say you won't play MP but claim to understand it how? In easy terms no dictator or demo could beat a uni in a pre or ave tech game. It is simply because of multipliers. A uni is 6 but gives you +50% farming and production. +1 farming is 4 if I remember and +1 production is 3 so that would be 7 total but wait my home world is aquatic which is +1 to my farming and thus makes my multiplier (2+1)*1.5 so each farmer does 4.5. My rich, +2 prod then makes that multiplier (3+2+2)*1.5 which is 10.5 per worker before pollution. So I got +1.5 in farming and +3.5 in production for only 6 points plus the spy bonus plus my no morale issues which makes alien pop more useful and uni is the bargain of the century.
Do you know how to pop farm? It is perhaps the second most important concept in MOO2 next to Unification rules.
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vmxa1
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Oviedo, Fl
Nov 2001
time: 21:17
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Not sure why you keep mentioning Battle Scanner, did someone not pick it? There is no disagreement with it.
The tax bit contradicts the claim that the game is over by t150, you will not need taxes before then, will you? Late in the game, I do not need it to support my fleet either. I will have plenty of money and will not over run my command point by much and not for a long period of time anyway. In MP that strategy may need to be changed.
I never said I understood MP, if I did I was mistaken. I only echo what you have said and that is in a week or a month one would adjust. I will say that nothing they do in MP is unheard in SP, there are no magic bullets to be found. As to build design, you do not know what mine is and if you did it would not be the same one Iwould use if I was playing MP, now would it. Yes I am aware of pop farming. Understand I am not playing UniAqua races and will play any number of races that may not be well suited to pop farming. I doo not bother with, that does not mean I am not fully aware of it and could not use it if I needed to do it. You make a lot of assumptions, that is not wise. so far all of the ones you have mentioned about my game have been wrong, just like many of the claims you have made. None of that mean you are not a skilled player, just very arrogant.
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originalbork
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OK, I was one of the top 3 multiplayers on both Kali & Ten. Was because I haven't played in 3 yrs.
Please understand that every strategy I have given and you have dismissed would slow a speed kill of the computer. When I said speed kill I mean, wiped out not just a senate vote. If you are playing for score, that is an entirely different beast. I wouldn't want to sit on my heels milking the clock for a high score, others may like that. Speed kills usually have a very low score. The only assumption I am making is the goal is to win as fast as possible.
Second the concept of pop farming is key to the pop explosion to which I speak. I can't remember the tech tree to a t but let me walk you through the early stages of a uni prewarp start. The start you showed me earlier was not a uni start.
Turn 0 scrap marine barracks, it's money in the bank and you can build one on a non-sb planet when the time comes. Then put a spy in que with just enough prod to get the colony base tech 1 turn before the spy is built. Immediately upon teching colony base place all production to colony base and build colony bases on every world which has 3 room for pop or more. Tinies suck. Don't worry about them unless they allow 3 pop or more unadjusted.
With each colony base you put down leave the 1 pop there with housing. Every time a 2nd is produced move it to the home world. You should be getting between about 120k to 250k per planet after you tech freighters and produce 1 set of freighters. As they produce a unit of pop immediately move it to your home.
When you begin doing this with autofactories the number will boost from 250k to 333k (all approximates)
When you add robo's it will go real close to 400k to 500k. Do not start filling another planet until the systems primary planet is full.
Next, I honestly don't remember how much I would need to get colony ships but I think I did rlabs and autofactories before going to enough tech to build colony ships. Regardless you will stop housing and switch to spy after a planet has produced a unit of housing such that it could build more than half but no more than all of your rlabs and af so that you can buy the balance the turn you get the tech.
Immediately thereafter you get colony ships and in a prewarp single player I would lay 2-3 down. Full production no research other than the labs themselves. The total number would depend on home system, surrounding systems worm holes and when I ran into the enemy. Once you hit about 8-10 planets you are ready to run out. Heck 10 planets with rl's is 50 rp.
There is another trick as to when and how to fill your new colony systems but that is lenghty.
At this point the enemy doesn't have squat and you can ward off any attack with missiles and a runner.
This is just the start. I really wish I had the cd again. Here are a couple quick answers.
Considering my claim of killing the 7 comps on impossible by turn 120-150, I need fleets rolling forward quick and large. One bit of protection is the fact I won't need anything but bb's. If I didn't have such a huge number of planets yes taxation gets high, actually my fleet is the right size if I need 50% tax to maintain it. That is by definition all I can afford so my fleet would be maxed out, a good thing. Carry this back to my thoughts on HF and SF and you will see that at 3 maintence per 6 food it just wasn't worth it. I would keep taxation at a minimum to allow positive cash and only bought what I needed.
I still challenge you to walk in with the multiplayers and come out in a week with any success. You won't, I didn't, nor will anyone without experience there is too much to learn unless you do it against someone who can punish you for your mistakes.
You still make the assumption that you know what the MP's know when you don't play them.
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vmxa1
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Oviedo, Fl
Nov 2001
time: 21:17
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Originally posted by originalbork
"Please understand that every strategy I have given and you have dismissed would slow a speed kill of the computer. When I said speed kill I mean, wiped out not just a senate vote. If you are playing for score, that is an entirely different beast. I wouldn't want to sit on my heels milking the clock for a high score, others may like that. Speed kills usually have a very low score. The only assumption I am making is the goal is to win as fast as possible. "
Ok, I guess I am doing a poor job of expalining myself as I did not mean to dismis anything you have said, I thought, I have agree with much of it. I sure did not mean to imply I play a lot fo rscore as I have not done so in qite awhile, it is not fun to me. I normally do not have much interest in speed kills either, but I am interested in hearing about how other do them.
"Second the concept of pop farming is key to the pop explosion to which I speak. I can't remember the tech tree to a t but let me walk you through the early stages of a uni prewarp start. The start you showed me earlier was not a uni start.
Turn 0 scrap marine barracks, it's money in the bank and you can build one on a non-sb planet when the time comes. Then put a spy in que with just enough prod to get the colony base tech 1 turn before the spy is built. Immediately upon teching colony base place all production to colony base and build colony bases on every world which has 3 room for pop or more. Tinies suck. Don't worry about them unless they allow 3 pop or more unadjusted. "
I have used that with uni races before, I did not sell the barracks as I did not figure it would matter for that test. but it is useles to a uni, which I had forgotten (well not totally useless, just no morale boost). I would have used the spy as a place holder and in fact did at one point, but I was not trying to get colony base, just colony ships for that test. Normally I would do it as you mentioned and colonize my system.
"With each colony base you put down leave the 1 pop there with housing. Every time a 2nd is produced move it to the home world. You should be getting between about 120k to 250k per planet after you tech freighters and produce 1 set of freighters. As they produce a unit of pop immediately move it to your home.
When you begin doing this with autofactories the number will boost from 250k to 333k (all approximates)
When you add robo's it will go real close to 400k to 500k. Do not start filling another planet until the systems primary planet is full."
Yup this is what I would normally do with a Uni race and is straight out of the newsgroups.
"Next, I honestly don't remember how much I would need to get colony ships but I think I did rlabs and autofactories before going to enough tech to build colony ships. Regardless you will stop housing and switch to spy after a planet has produced a unit of housing such that it could build more than half but no more than all of your rlabs and af so that you can buy the balance the turn you get the tech. "
"Immediately thereafter you get colony ships and in a prewarp single player I would lay 2-3 down. Full production no research other than the labs themselves. The total number would depend on home system, surrounding systems worm holes and when I ran into the enemy. Once you hit about 8-10 planets you are ready to run out. Heck 10 planets with rl's is 50 rp. "
"There is another trick as to when and how to fill your new colony systems but that is lenghty.
At this point the enemy doesn't have squat and you can ward off any attack with missiles and a runner."
"This is just the start. I really wish I had the cd again. Here are a couple quick answers.
Considering my claim of killing the 7 comps on impossible by turn 120-150, I need fleets rolling forward quick and large. One bit of protection is the fact I won't need anything but bb's. If I didn't have such a huge number of planets yes taxation gets high, actually my fleet is the right size if I need 50% tax to maintain it. That is by definition all I can afford so my fleet would be maxed out, a good thing. Carry this back to my thoughts on HF and SF and you will see that at 3 maintence per 6 food it just wasn't worth it. I would keep taxation at a minimum to allow positive cash and only bought what I needed. "
"I still challenge you to walk in with the multiplayers and come out in a week with any success. You won't, I didn't, nor will anyone without experience there is too much to learn unless you do it against someone who can punish you for your mistakes."
"You still make the assumption that you know what the MP's know when you don't play them. "
I just do not seem to know how to state my point with more clarity. I never said I would have any sucess at all at MP, although I am sure I would get up to speed to hold my own. That is not important. The focus for MP is differnet, but not unknown. I have read and in fact still have all of the post from the old newsgroups, so all of the topics were discussed. I have forgotten much of them, but it would come back.
Anyway I have not intented to make and claims for myself, nor in any way impune you. I think I have concrred with nearly everthing you have said, except two points the 3 colony ships in 45-50 turns and winning SP in 110 turns. Even those, I only asked for the road map as I am dubious. You keep implying that I do this or that and am some rookie and that is fine, except you did not bother to find out if that is fact is correct. My only other point is not that I or anyone else could take on MP and conquer it, only that a person that understands the game will do just fine at MP after a break in period, that it is not some game that has no bearing on what the SP game is. Just because one chooses to play this way or that way, does not mean they do not know how to play in other ways. anyway thanks for the input. Your post did bring back some concepts that I have not used in some time and next game I play I may go back to test a Uni race. Oh, I did enjoy your diagnoses of the reasearch choices and I am very sure many others will appreciate it.
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bakalov
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Sofia
Nov 2002
time: 07:17
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I think that there should be different rules for different tournaments, it may be boring to play in a single style every time; and everyone to do as you do .......
You, the tournament guys, are limited by the tournament rules. I am trying to take pleasure from the game, not just a powerplay in some single-styled manner ...... The powerplay is for kids, being an emperor is a pleasure :-)
Last edited by bakalov on 18-11-2002 at 14:58
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originalbork
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Bakalov, the kali players play many games. 1 on 1, 4-6 man ffa, ally games, pre, ave, adv, no tech trading, no using uni etc. What game did I leave out? All of the jump strategies are ok for 1 on 1 games but will get you slaughtered in a large ffa.
The most boring game is allowing tech trading in a ffa. The tech comes in so fast that building a decisive fleet before an opponent could match it was nearly impossible, and everyone was trading. Once interdictors are in play you really open yourself up because your fleet will be gone for 4 turns in an attack.
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originalbork
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Considering any uni race has a nice spy defence add you usually throw a defensive spy up on contact to prevent that tactic. An offensive spy is a caclulated risk becuase it will cost you more often then help you...but getting that star base is nice and I try just often enough to see to force a defence from my opponent. In a 8 player SP game I would build no more than 4 until after turn 100.
Personally I avoid any trick that will likely cost me the game for trying it and failing.
My style is a production/timing master and knowing when I have just enough to finish the job and how to do it with optimal speed and minimal loss. I was only average at fighting shorthanded. Then again why fight shorthanded.
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originalbork
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True but unless you have +spy mods (big waste of points) I would still have an advantage. Uni is +15 def spy -10 espy is still +5 def spy.
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originalbork
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quote:
Originally posted by bakalov
vmxa, If I were you I wouldn't listen to these MP guys that speak of timings. Their timings are based on using of a couple of bugs in the game that ruin the game in any or other way ... They are using these because they are forced to - anyone there uses these and will lose for sure if he don't.
I dont want to post here about such things but ... |
That is a pretty bold statement about MP's, Bakalov. Telling someone we cheated the game but then won't tell them how. I'd love to hear the bugs we used. To my knowledge any "bug" in the game was made illegal in MP ladder games or tournament games.
Seeing as you won't bring any up, I will. There was the "money" bug. If you finished building something with extra production left over it would be automitically turned into the appropriate amount of cash. That would be fine except you would still get the excess production toward the item you placed into que next. This was made illegal in the star league on kali (not known about on ten). We required all players to place housing at the end of all ques to prevent this bug. Most people probably don't even know about the bug and I am sure most SP do it without knowledge.
Please enlighten me as to the othe bugs we used.
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16-11-2002 09:32
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