I’m having trouble beating this game at the highest difficulty level. The combat engine assigns surprisingly high attrition losses to the combat victor, even when my fleet is overwhelmingly superior. The 2.71 version AI is smart enough to just keep coming w/ attacks on infrastructure and ships in transit and, although my super-fleets knock out a dozen or so big enemy fleets, eventually my fleets attrit to nothing, and the AI’s humongous bonus advantage makes it unassailable; I just can’t dispose of its blizzard of ships.
This game has virtually no documentation for high level play. But the strategy is obviously very deep (a very good thing!), and sometimes I feel like I’m missing something.
Any suggestions basis experience? For instance, are there AI factions that are more vulnerable? I’m playing Crusade w/o any DLC.