Suggestions vs Godlike AI

I'm spanking godlike AI so far, although I'm not playing large maps yet. 

 

Have you tried a military starbase?   First, it seems the AI's don't respect your military might too much, which is why they declare war.  Stationing ships with high attack in a starbase zoc, and then having the starbase boost their attack further is a good way to flap your arms and roar like a bear at them.  And second, if they're already at war, they tend to send their ships along the same corridor, so the military starbase certainly gets its frequent flyer miles.  

Third, are you using a commander citizen?  

Fourth, your development in general might be a bit slow.  By the start of my first war, I'm usually only up to small hulls.  And I establish early contact and try to get a freighter going ASAP.   That's a habit I acquired from Galciv2:  I don't know how much it applies to Galciv3, but having just one trade route which the AI would have to forfeit if he declared war on you has been a big deterrent in the past--and I haven't cared to test if that still holds true or not.  

You only need to survive long enough to get to carriers.  Then you can leave your support ships behind and start to invade people. 

In my last game, the AI attacked from 3 directions. It certainly looked like it was specifically flanking me to get around my main fleets (and eat my asteroid bases).

I've not used military bases before because a ) I haven't needed to and b ) their description is vague. Do they add their weapon and defense values to ships in their zoc? Also Admin points are precious on large maps... But no use when I'm dead. 

I'll try the freighter strategy. I've had a trading AI declare war before, but not since Crusade. 

I've not used commanders yet - they seem like a waste? I'm assuming they're only good as flag captains. Once again, the description is vague so what do they do? 

In every thread I've seen so far, carrier abilities are lamented. Are they actually good in Crusade? 

I appreciate the replies - I just don't get enough time to really experiment.

Tips:

Robots! Synthetic races take a looong time to get rolling, but once they do its a cakewalk. You don't have to deal with morale, loyalty, cities, food production, etc. You just focus on building stuff.

Asteroids! These are the single biggest boost to ... well, everything. Mine lots of asteroids, even if that means building a starbase next to a clump in the middle of nowhere just to get your influence over them.

Keep the AI busy. If they are fighting wars with each other, they are more likely to avoid messing with you. That's good. We want to be militarily unengaged until it's time to walk on some cake.

Blitz! There is a early/mid game window of opportunity to conquer a Godlike AI. You want to get planetary invasion and a single nut-cracking fleet together before other empires have to put down garrisons. Once garrisons start getting installed, it's a tough slide. When planets are completely undefended, you just trounce planet after planet after planet until your nut-cracking fleet runs out of steam.

Fleet Commanders. Get one of these for your nut-cracking fleet. It instantly doubles your hitpoints and boosts logistics too. Nice.

Conquer as many minor civs as you can before they are gobbled up by others.

Mercenaries: If you have Mercs expansion, there are some very specific ones you need to watch out for: The Anvil gives you legions and a troop ship before you can even research such a thing. This is the single best ship in the expansion. You can wipe out a large section of the undefended galaxy before defenses can even be researched for it. Also, any ship that gives flat boosts to raw production or science are wonderful. Get these and park them on your key planets.

Commanders rock and roll.  That alone might do it for you.

Carriers only suck if you have support class ships in your fleet.

Military starbases and freighters are Galciv2 strategies that I've been applying to Galciv3, so I can't say for sure how the AI responds to them, but I can say that I've been doing it and Godlike AI has put up a fight and that's about it.  

I can say for a fact in Galciv3 that you can beat brute force with speed.  Fast sensor ships to find his ships and weak spots.  Blazing fast transports to pick off undefended planets.  Fast asteroid killers:  one attack, zero armor, all engines; maybe one sensor.  Each asteroid you pick off:  that's a Godlike AI multiplying those asteroid bonuses.  Asteroid killers don't die as much as you might think, if you have good sensors. 

leiavoia:

Yep to synthetic, shoulda said that in the original post. Synthetic xeno/slavers that focus on ship abilities and a few others. I forget exactly. With how ugly the trinity of morale/pop/food is in Crusade, I feel like synthetics are king. And asteroids are my fav for sure! I've taken single resource spots with 6 asteroids near a new colony just for production boost.

I'll probably boost my custom race's diplo skills in the next game to try my hand at Machiavelli tactics. I'll keep the "golden window" in mind as well.

Double hp for my escorts and a logistics boost? That's pretty sweet. Wish this was documented somewhere... I just don't have time to dig into the XML files.

Love me some research/production/mining mercs. I haven't seen the transport one - I'll keep an eye out. Thanks much!

tetleytea:

I'll give carriers a go next game as well as the military starbase and freighters. Mebbe that with more diplo skills will keep me peaceful.

Oh I love me some asteroid killers. Like you said: one kinetic and lots of drives/sensors. I cost the AI several thousand credits in asteroids over ~50 turns last game. They can get cornered & killed but it's still worth it.

Preciate the replies!

 

I'm trying a new trick now where I slap a long-range missile on my second survey ship, cargo hull.  It's still a survey ship and still can't survey defended anomalies alone (nor do I want it to), but it has an added function, as a fast raider of defenseless stuff.   I name it the Gremlin. 

I do almost the same but give it enough shields to get the defended anomalies.  Early (when shields are weak) i pair two up in a fleet

Did they change it recently? Last I checked they doubled the amount of moves on the galaxy map! Which is potentially even bigger than the battle buffs.

When going xeno, you should definitely take the militant +2 trait, too. 70% is a lot more than 50% ship production.

What ideology are you playing with? Try malevolent production, intimidation centers are useless, but the two follow ups solve your ship production by making your homeworld ridiculous.

Take my advice with a pinch of salt, since I played my only godlike game in crusade only up till turn 51. After that I concluded I was winning. I don't know if there was a train still about to hit me, but at that point I had kicked two civs into the dust (colonized 3 worlds, conquered another 11, helps with the ship production weakness, too AND saves administrators), was first in research by a margin and had all the techs I needed to start putting out my workhorse battle ships.

Talking about ships, if you want to go max abuse, don't fool around with defenses, get evasion+repair. It stacks a lot better than normal defenses, because the AI doesn't take counter measures to evasion. 20% evasion from civ trait plus 10% from a jammer, plus 35% from two fleet boosters makes 65%, that means repair and hitpoints are 3 times as strong as they usually would be (against 100% accuracy weapons, against lower it is even more). Ones you ahve high enough drive tech, you add the tactical speed boosters for even more evasion on your frontline ships. Reducing enemy hit chance to 10% (the absolute minimum) and having 10 repair means, they need to effectively do 100 dps in damage to even scratch your ship. Not to mention they still have to eat through 1000+ effective hp (but that's lategame obviously).

I probably would follow it up with beam weapon specializaion, since it allows for high tier weapons construction with low ressource cost.

Lastly, your strongest feature as synthetic is not population, but twin research colony uniques. The others only have civilization uniques.

I'm pretty sure I took militant but I'd have to double check. I thought tier 2 was only 15% but can't recall for sure. I'm probably thinking of another trait.

I'm primarily malevolent with a hint of pragmatic for the constructors and later the gross economy bonus. Malevolent does me right. 

I haven't tried the full evasion strategy yet although I did take the jammer traits. I'm not sure I was far enough into the tech tree last game to make it work. 

The double integer research buildings on top of integer/percent general research buildings is so unfair as to be pretty much broken. I'd be surprised if Stardock doesn't change that one... 

Pretty much everything I suggest, including synth. xeno-slavers is pretty broken ^^

I just started a godlike Insane map.  Which first off, the map lives up to its name, big-time.  But anyway....

My trade ship strategy doesn't work so much vs. the Drengin.  Drengin care about military might, and that's it. 

However, I'm playing military starbases, and they work even better than in Galciv2.  The trick around the administration problem is to park them on relics.  You were going to claim those anyway, so if there is no useful mining nearby, you might as well go military, and make it easier to defend.  Plus going military extends your radius to 7, giving you more tactical options where to park it.  Unlike in Galciv2, military starbases give immediate ship assist bonuses (for free), where before you needed 2 constructors, minimum, before they were of any use at all.  My "Victory uncertains" suddenly just changed to "Victory likely".  

I've got a relic right in the middle of the Drengin empire, which he already claimed.  I don't care--we're at war.  Slap on a couple hyperdrives to the. constructor to evade enemy ships, and park that guy right in the middle of his space.  His ships draw in like a magnet.  Take over his planets inside the radius, kill his starbase, he's done.   My offensive military SB now defends my new planets. 

Now, it's making sense to design three-weapon ships, just to take advantage of the military SB assists.  That's how I define my new Defender class ships now:  slow, grab one of each weapon just to get the assist.  Designed to go with military SB.

Interesting. I started a new game over the weekend and had perhaps the best start ever. I started on the edge of the map and have 20 colonies in a concentrated area. I didn't run into any races before turn 50. Of the two I've seen, one liked me immediately (despite 0 military) and one hated... Until I sent over the preemptively built trade ships. Now he's just fine.

I'm definitely gonna try out a military Starbase. That sounds very fun to do.

Military SB works better at the low tech (where boosting a stat by 1 means a lot more).  Then Commanders take over in importance, as your logistics goes up.  You need to use Carriers to leverage the military SB at high techs. 

The nice thing is, if you've got a relic and nothing near it, all you have to do is choose a military ring (for free) instead of cultural, and you've got it.  That gives you 2 extra hexes range, maybe to park it next to an asteroid.   If you pay for the hyperfield add-on, that can help your ships zip right through nebulae. 

@tetleytea can you be more spesific abaut military SBs. To use its buff do ships must be inside of the zone of control?

yes. also to see the speed boost you ships must start in the zone

Ships must be in the 7-hex ZOC to get the buff, but any precursor relics must be in the 5-hex zoc.  In other words, if you build a military SB 7 hexes away from a relic and 7 hexes away from a ship, the ship will get the buff, but you will not be able to claim the relic.  

For the move bonus, though, I am not so sure about having to start your turn in the radius.  This is Galciv3.  The slipstream module gives -25% movement cost to every hex within the zoc.  Which is much more powerful in a nebula.