It's lonely here! (First post!)

[Hunpecked]

Xrati writes:

"What traits are you running? What's your "weapon of choice" stratigy for your race?"

The game I described has gotten to the point where I think it's pretty much won. I control about 40% of the quadrant, but more importantly I've captured enough aliens to populate nearly every planet with native breathers. The Narn have developed the Talisman, but I have them vastly outnumbered and have captured about half their Talisman-equipped ships via Intel projects.

The AIs seem to have a lot of trouble with mines, so I think I'll try to make a mod without mine technology. I just ran 35 turns of a test game in which I didn't use mines, set my Intel capacity to minimum, and set tech cost to High (I felt I went through the tech tree too quickly last time). I stopped the game when I ran into the first AI mines. I played with simultaneous move/strategic combat.

As it turned out, I ran into the Tessellate (again!) around turn 18. This time I directed my research to Projectile Weapons and Point Defense, while the Tessellate stuck with Missiles. With 1 to 3 PDC per ship, my frigates and destroyers were basically invulnerable to Tessellate missiles, and I won ship-to-ship battles handily. The AI also displayed a tendency to hurl its missile ships like lemmings against the DUC/PDC weapons platforms on my forward outpost.

On the other hand the Tessellate apparently did a decent job of developing their empire. Resource production, though inefficient, was ahead of mine (they traded with other AIs), research was at about 2/3, number of colonies and ships was about the same, and they had researched mines, satellites, and light cruisers before I did (I went for PDC, shields, and troops first). If I can just mod out the mines, I think the next game could be much more interesting.

[Hunpecked]

Silly rabbit! Mine tech can be removed during initial game setup! No modding necessary.

Now we'll see if the TDM AIs know how to cope with a mine-less universe.

[Xrati]

"Quiet, I'm hunting for Wabbit!"

What a great idea for a mod, an Elmer Fudd race that roams the Galaxy hunting Wabbit!

Once you get numerical superiority, it's a matter of just cleaning up.

[Hunpecked]

Well, I'm nearly 60 turns into the next game against the "Big 5" AI empires, and it's certainly more fun. With mines turned off I'm inflicting less passive damage on the AI navies and fighting more actual battles (and not always winning). Admittedly part of this is poor play on my part (I've been slow to defend warp points with satellite groups), but overall I think the game balance is much better.

I also like the expensive tech option; it tends to prolong the usefulness of older ships, reduces the human player's tech advantage over the computer, and shifts the game's emphasis more from whiz-bang ultimate weapons toward good steady play.

Further play may reveal my expectations to be exaggerated, but so far it's looking good.

[Xrati]

Sounds like your having more fun then any human should ever have!!!

[Hunpecked]

Not quite. I mean, it's not like I'm playing strip SEIV hotseat with supermodel Adriana Lima!

[Xrati]

Well if you can play mindless games! I'm sorry, that's mine less games. It must have been the super model thing!

I've found that in the late game, mines become useless anyhow. All fleets run around with minesweepers and replacement capacity is limited because of production needs, say as in really BIG ships!

[Hunpecked]

While I have certainly made some "mindless" moves in this game , I believe the "mine-less" aspect has more to do with the AIs' performance so far. While human players can take them (almost) in stride, mines seem to pose a much harder problem for the AIs in SEIV. If I understand Master Belisarius correctly, it's impossible in SEIV to program an AI to build fleets with the proper number and design of minesweepers. In my first big game against the AIs, for example, by turn 100 the Narn were building battleship minesweepers with level 1 sweeper components, and sending them singly into my fields of 90-100 mines. The AIs do put haphazard fields at jump points, but apparently nowhere else, including planets. Since I consider SEIV's mines feature "gimmicky" anyway, I didn't think I'd miss them (and I don't).

Anyway, last night I had a big turn (#68). I had recolonized a border system sterilized earlier by the Aquilaeians, and was building weapons platforms in a frenzy (I had colonized both a planet and its moon to double production). Unfortunately a 22-ship CR/LC Aquilaeian fleet soon jumped in-system and headed for the planet and its rag-tag fleet of 10 LCs. Two jumps away, meanwhile, the 8 cruisers I had gathered to reinforce the first system were faced instead with another CR/LC fleet (of 20-odd ships) that had just blown through the satellites guarding the warp point.

My anxiety was misplaced, however. The cruiser fleet annihilated the second enemy fleet without loss, thanks to fleet/ship training, Level 2 ECM, and Level 3 Stealth/Scattering Armor. The first enemy fleet bypassed the recolonized planet (for now), giving me time to put two more weapons platforms in place. And on the other side of my little empire I captured the Narn Homeworld intact--just in time, too, because I also captured 5 undeployed satellites equipped with Talismans (Talismen?)! With luck the Narn are too weak now to take advantage of their breakthrough, but I forsee hard fighting on this front.

BTW, the more I see of the Narn in these games against the AI, the more I wonder why they didn't make the final round of AI Deathmatch 3. With their strength in research (125%), they reached PPB V before I did, developed intelligence capability shortly after I did, and despite high tech cost developed the Talisman about the same time they did in an earlier normal tech cost game (and ahead of the Tessellate, winners of Deathmatch 3). Some time I'd like to try more min-maxing on their attributes (many are left at default) and put them up against the Tessellate.