Pirates & Nomads Strat Help

Arkcon · #1 August 2nd, 2003, 12:09 AM

You kinda have the goal down. Just surviving while everyone outstrips you in technology and numbers is the challange.

Pick one race to be your ally, and let them colonize around you. Ignore diplomacy with everyone else, diplomats ... hah ... who needs their pithy little trade goods anyway,
"Lets trade research resources and advance both our races"
"Yeah, umkay, how 'bout plan B. You research it, and build it, and then I'll just take it"

Let them declare war, that way you can get ships to capture. Peace is death to pirates. Put a spaceyard base and scavanger ship at the warp points. Take 'em as they arrive.

Definitely capture colony ships. They have no defences or weapons. Use these to form colonies. Or research troops, and capture planets.

Remember, if they glass your home world, as long as you have the resources, your ships won't die. And they can't intel you if you have no planets. Build a pirate hoard somewhere no one will find it.

narf poit chez BOOM · #2 August 2nd, 2003, 01:14 AM

is it possible to win?
has anybody done it?

Krsqk · #3 August 2nd, 2003, 05:56 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ack:
(ugh! Civ3 reference, think spearmen against tank).

Just like in Civ3, there is a chance that the spearmen can win.

Tactical combat is a must!

narf poit chez BOOM · #4 August 2nd, 2003, 06:08 AM

in civ1, i lost my first ever battleship to a spearman. so i reloaded.

i think it was my first ever. maybe. that was a while ago. it was fortified and the city might have had walls. i dunno.

[ August 02, 2003, 05:10: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

Arkcon · #5 August 2nd, 2003, 04:07 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
is it possible to win?
has anybody done it?

I think I could have in my most recent game. I gave the AI small bonus, and that's not enough, they really do need at least medium.

When the AI gets baseship tech, well, it never builds smaller ships. So a lost planet needs a baseship colonizer, a world depopulated by an event needs a baseship sized transport to repopulate it. All that is too expensive in maintenance, and the AI scraps as soon as it builds.

If they could have found me, they would have killed me sooner. When you reach endgame like this, the AI stratagies aren't so good.

The pinudon were a pain, constantly using intel, and they never built ships. That is, when I took them over, I saw them build, and scrap on the same turn.

The Tolyatan survived pretty good, but then they usually do, but their major system went nova. The terrans were holding their own for a while.

The sergetti were doing very well, building lots of ppb baseships. Really holding their own, even though everyone else had phased shields. I made all the remaining AI's surrender to the Sergetti. With the resource boost they would have been a challenge. An event sent a baseship to my homesystem, and that was the end of me, I wasn't really ready for that to happen. I was relying on a heaviliy defended warp points, and a deep sensor base in cloaking nebula.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have set the game up for high numbers of AI's -- I wanted a diversity of ships to maximize my captures -- but they fought with each other too much. I couldn't even reach some before the were extinct.

I also sholudn't have turned on neutrals, they didn't take the "Is normal" trait, so didn't build resource extracters, complete dead weight. I thought the AI's would kill them quickly and take the planets, but they were too slow.

I wanted to get a battlemoon before I wiped them off the face of the galaxy. But that didn't happen.

Suicide Junkie · #6 August 5th, 2003, 07:05 PM

TDM AIs don't get so hung up on baseships, and are highly reccommended.

Just be sure to use the AIPatcher on them so they will work with P&N.

Arkcon · #7 August 5th, 2003, 08:54 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
TDM AIs don't get so hung up on baseships, and are highly reccommended.

Just be sure to use the AIPatcher on them so they will work with P&N.

Yeah, I will try that next before I start a story.

By the way SJ, I removed the "Is not a pirate=1" line from the battlemoon entry in vehicles.txt, but I didn't see battlemoon in the tech tree for my pirate race. What do I have to do to get a battemoon for the pirates. Please. Pretty please?

[ August 05, 2003, 20:21: Message edited by: Arkcon ]