Cant beat the Dominon

posted on January 22nd, 2009, 12:24 am

Although it is fun trying...I can not beat the Dominion using the Federation in instant action.

I have beaten every other race...

I usually get several hours in doing ok...then finally just get overwhelmed with Dominion ships.  When I lose a large number of ships in a battle I just can't seem to recover.  Then the remaining Dominion swoop in and finish me off...

Like I said, it is fun trying to think up new ideas.  But after 10 tries....sheesh.

posted on January 22nd, 2009, 12:46 am

What difficulty are you playing on and what's your strategy thus far?

posted on January 23rd, 2009, 5:25 pm

if he's playing on hard, it doesn't matter what strategy he was using, there's nothing you can do against an AI that builds fully upgraded ships and cheats like hell.

[tom]

posted on January 23rd, 2009, 11:48 pm

Last edited by tom on January 24th, 2009, 12:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

wrong. it's possible to beat hard AI but it's not possible to spam ships faster then AI.
@people saying stuff like 'hard AI is too hard': if FO team will nerf AI i'll be sad

Edit: changed in orger not to sound unpolite, after optec comment. sorry about that

posted on January 24th, 2009, 1:00 am

the hard AI will be adjusted a bit

please watch your tongue in the forums

posted on January 24th, 2009, 2:30 am

Only a bit please.

AI hard must be hard. And yes, it's possible.

posted on January 24th, 2009, 1:51 pm

its not that impossible to beat a hard AI
small hint: The Hard AI mostly attacks after u did meet some ships or a base from the AI ... means: u dont scout around till u got a decent fleet that can handle some stuff

Also i noted the Hard AI is quite slow with bringing the big ships on the way, usally i get way faster the big ships than the AI does.

posted on January 24th, 2009, 7:36 pm

Great Tactic against Hard AI:

Build some ships, that can handle 2 perimeter and 2 stations. If you play let's say fed build  another 4 defiants or use other fast ships. Attack a mining outpost and destroy it. Wait. You'll be attacked pretty fast there. Take a run with your small fast ships and attack with your fleet into the base. So you can make some survier damage, and the AI won't get too hard.

posted on January 25th, 2009, 8:15 am

by the time you get the defiants, you'll get attacked more than once. And besides, to build defiants you need tons of resources and even the defiants can't stop 20+ V13 battleships and breen battleships and tons of bugs, bombers and cruisers of all kinds

posted on January 25th, 2009, 8:24 am

No, but they can slow them down.

posted on January 25th, 2009, 10:33 am

You should set AI buildtime handycap to 2.0 and Build costs on 2.0 too, There is a Bug in 3.0.1 allowing the Ai to build ships much faster than you.

posted on January 25th, 2009, 3:59 pm

You should set AI buildtime handycap to 2.0 and Build costs on 2.0 too, There is a Bug in 3.0.1 allowing the Ai to build ships much faster than you.

That is not a bug, it is a necessity.

You see the AI just runs through a build list and builds the first thing it hasn't built already. Once it has started building that it will look if it can build the next item. If it does not find a free yard or base or constructor it will wait for the first item to finish.

So for instance if the build list says "build 2 freighters, then build a mining station" and it only has one base, then the AI will wait for the first freighter to finish (the base isn't free to build), then order the second and the mining station (the base & constructor are free). Of course it is more sensible to put the mining station first, this is only an example. But you can see the AI stalling, a human player says "well I got my freighters building, I'll just build a mining station with this constructor and a yard with the other" The AI really needs faster build times to keep up with humans at the beginning. Of course this sort of backfires later in the game where it has a good advantage and less bottlenecks because of all the free yards.

The lower cost is mainly because of the AI's wastefulness with ships, sending fleets of 1-4 ships into the jaws of death every so often. If they had to pay full price for them they'd be economically crippled very fast. Not to mention if they are out of resources they won't consider building more mining stations, no they will run along the same build list.

So in order to make the AI more challenging you need it to cheat.

posted on January 25th, 2009, 6:01 pm

Actually, I don't think the AI even uses resources 

posted on January 25th, 2009, 7:05 pm

Actually, I don't think the AI even uses resources 

They do, several times I've seen AI shipyards in both stock & Fleet Ops that have ships in the build list that are not building, exactly the same as when you have a shortage of something.

posted on January 28th, 2009, 1:07 am

I play on HARD.  The only reason I mentioned it is...I can beat every other race on HARD with the federation except the Dominion.  I have only been playing on one map, perhaps thats it.  I have played with both avatars and tried pretty much every strategy I can think of.  I must have gone through 20 games...granted as I said..its fun trying.