New to the game - any help please?

posted on May 25th, 2011, 6:39 am

Thanks Ray, I'll be watching them throughout my spare time, I watched the first 15 minutes of Megadroid's and Myles' tournament game where they tied for the top spot in their group, but then had to go to bed

I'll be looking for you then Majestic, I'm sure you will get you Loss:Win ratio up playing me 

Thanks for a warm welcome guys, give it some time and I hope to be competing with the best of you 

posted on May 25th, 2011, 10:30 am

Fighting talk, good to hear!

posted on May 25th, 2011, 10:37 am

Cube cube cube 

Was a pleasure mate, it's nice to be able to take it slow once in a while.

I'll happily play again tonight if you would like. 

posted on May 25th, 2011, 3:49 pm

Those turrets were a damn pain I'm up for another game tonight, but I can't do it until after 9 GMT, I'll pop on Tunngle and see if you're there when I can 

posted on May 25th, 2011, 9:25 pm

Hey come back on tunngle 

posted on May 26th, 2011, 6:37 pm

Sorry about last night, one of those days. Came on for a quick game but I think you was already in one, so decided to go to bed I'll be on tonight for one if anyone is interested

posted on May 26th, 2011, 11:43 pm

I'll be looking for you then Majestic, I'm sure you will get you Loss:Win ratio up playing me 

I'm in it for the fun and to help someone new out, as I was helped when I first started and still am by many in the community here, Denarius, Mal, Immercenary, 23-Down to name a few.

I'll keep an eye out for you, I'll be on tomorrow, as being in a timezone vastly different to most players here, I have to go out out today and won't be on when most from the northern hemisphere are on. 

posted on May 27th, 2011, 8:55 am

You mean when most of the USA players are on
We have a lot of germans here lately

posted on May 27th, 2011, 9:27 am

I played 2 games last night with Dragonfire, Stargazer and 23down, was some good 2 on 2 play so I enjoyed that a lot  I'll be on a fair bit tonight since I have no plans made. Hope to see some of you there

posted on May 27th, 2011, 5:17 pm

I don't know if you're still interested in AI strategies...but IMO, the key to beating the AI is to take advantage of "patterns".

For Non-Borg AI:

I've found over time that if you can keep them hemmed-in to a single expansion (while not losing your own)...you can usually win.  While they will keep producing warships, if you're constantly destroying the miners, it is constantly re-building them (and seem to produce less warships), and your ships gain ranks.  This requires that your fleet is constantly engaged with something, when not repairing.  If your ships are sitting in a defensive posture for any "extended" length of time, you've lost against the AI.

If they expand to a second or third moon pair, don't worry about it too much....just look at it as an easy opportunity to rank-up your ships.  Just keep an eye on their constructors, and try to prevent them building turrets or yards outside their primary base.  Don't linger too long in any one area, or the AI will eventually send their ships to defend.  Leave the mining stations intact, so the AI sends-out more miners without a constructor.

If they get a proxy yard at their primary expansion, you're in trouble, but not done.  You'll have to build a proxy yard of your own, as close as possible to the enemy yard, so that you can keep your primary fleet engaged.  The AI will sometimes walk-away inexplicably from defending the yard, once you've destroyed enough ships.  At that point, destroy the yard, and watch for any signs of a new yard going-up in another area.

After that, it just becomes a game of cat-and-mouse....where you whittle-down the AI fleet, while managing to not lose your own.  I find that two "raider" fleets (about 5-7 early-game ships), can usually provide enough firepower to pick-off lone warships & miners, while keeping the enemy fleet disorganized and confused.  Sometimes by raiding, you can "freeze" and entire AI fleet, and get them to turn-around to engage your raiders.....giving you time to either plan for reinforcements, or another attack.

The key is to avoid engaging the primary AI fleet, until you know you have enough firepower to destroy the ships coming your way (with minimal losses), and enough tanks so that you can micro your damaged ships out of battle.  The AI will always out-produce you early-game no matter how many mining moon-pairs you have accumulated.

For myself, sometimes it takes 30-45 minutes to get to that point, but it's clear when you reach that point because the AI is sending groups of 2-3 ships out randomly, rather than large 10+ ship fleets.

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For the Borg AI:

Constantly destroy any warships you can.    They seem to build up a fleet of 4-5 assimilators, before they begin teching-up into higher-end ships.  If you can pick-off a lone assimilator or two, then they try to rebuild it (rinse-n-repeat until the AI no longer has a fleet).    Likewise for Scubes, Dodes, and Adapters... but destroyed Asims seem to give you more time to build-up.


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Another thing I have noticed with the AI, is that if you can snipe their primary Star Base (before they build any others), the AI will stop building warships.  However, if you have enough firepower to do that, then you've probably already won the game.

Hope this helps a bit... 

posted on May 27th, 2011, 5:30 pm

I've also read the guides made by Boggz, which were awesome by the way And I've read a few other guys and strategies, however I seem to get crushed quite quickly during the game.

Glad you enjoyed them .  They are a bit outdated now but a lot of the principle points should remain useful.

  Keep in mind though that I wrote those for use in Online Play vs. other humans  .  Facing the AI is a completely different story as it's ability to "cheat" with resources, supply, and build times tend to mess up the purposes of specialist units that are designed to counter other very expensive or costly units.

  Sadly, the best way of defeating the AI is to either rush and defeat their yards or simply mass up a large number of the most generalist units like Intrepids / Akiras / KBQ / Sang / (Rommies don't have a great generalist at the moment for AI games in my opinion) / Adaptors / Spheres / Bugs / V13.

posted on May 27th, 2011, 5:47 pm

Thanks for the advice NeroDan, I'll keep that in mind next time I play. I've been keeping to my normal Fed strategy and build order so I get some practice when I can't get online, I've been playing (and winning) merciless AI quite a lot today during my down time, but I think the main reason I am winning is because I choose a map of 6-8 slots, and fill them all for a merciless AI FFA 

I played from 3:45 til 6:20 or so on one map, hiding the game from the odd worker who might want to drop his manager in it to head office  but after defeating the first two AI located next to me, I just turtled up and watch my turrets destroy AI ships coming through the blue nebulae. It's nice watching wave and wave of ships crash over my turrets, like waves breaking on rocks  Once I had actually mined 99999 Di and Tri I thought 'yeah, maybe this game has gone on too long', and wiped them out.

Anyway, I hope to be on Tunngle a bit later for some games if any of you fancy a pasting 

posted on May 27th, 2011, 9:56 pm

Eh sorry I haven't been on tonight guys, sister had a bust up with her husband and I've been playing peace keeper I'll make time for you all tomorrow night, barring any act of God

posted on May 29th, 2011, 5:12 am

Eh sorry I haven't been on tonight guys, sister had a bust up with her husband and I've been playing peace keeper I'll make time for you all tomorrow night, barring any act of God

I'll be looking for you for sure.