Favorite Strategies

using a tactic with in the game is not cheating,
that is just a method of taking advantage of the resources in the game, it is the same thing that any empire would do (maybe not that method, but every empire will seek to find a way to get ahead of the other empires.

A strategy that was common in SE4 which is also applicable in SE5 is to start the first 10 turns of the game with your homeworld on emergancy build (see the option in the build cue for an explanation). This gives you 150% production, and allows you to build colony ships in a single turn. I use emergency build to completely settle my entire starting system in the first five or six turns of the game depending on the number of inhabitable planets.

Also, be aware of the production capabilities of your ship yards when you're designing ships. If adding that one peice of armour makes the ship take an extra turn to build, it's probably not worth it. This isn't as big a deal as it was in SE4 when left over production at the end of a turn did not carry-over.

Finally, I always add at least one satelite launcher to my transports. It doesn't hurt their cargo capacity much, and now you can use them to launch a small number of satellites. I also make sure I have at least one design of satellite that contains basic sensors (Sentry Satellites). Then I use my transports to run around my home system placing at least one Sentry Satellite on every planet and every warp point.
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The goggles... they do nothing!

Other than colonizes as fast as I can the other thing I do at the begging of the game is to build almost all research facilities. As the need arises for more resources or capabilities, I scrap research and build what I need.

Maybe you could put a couple on a scout ship to leave behind as it explores new solar systems that way you might be able to detect if any other ships enter these new solar systems.
And if you could cloak the Sentry Satellites then the other races may not even know that you have the ability to detect them. (Can you cloak satellites?)

I like using colony in a box mid/late game. Sending colony ships along with a transport loaded with the best Weapon Platforms I have. I just drop them off leaving the new planet ready defended. I also do it with mines for first line defence as well.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

StarHunter5, you're a genious!!! I'm totally going to do that. You would only need to place 1 single satellite launcher on your scout and just enough cargo capacity for a couple of satelites (maybe one for each warp point in the system you're surveying). Pure genious!

Which brings to mind another strategy I used in SE4, although I haven't tried it yet in space empires. If you're a fan of David Weber's honor harrington books, then you know about the missile pod concept in those books. Basically, instead of loading a ship up with missile launchers which are huge and take up alot of the surface area of a ship, just give the ship cargo space for lots of pods with missile launchers on them. Then have the ship be capable of deploying the pods during combat and having all of the pods simultaneously launch... resulting in massive msisile volleys, but limited ordinance.

You can simulate this in space empires by building a satellite launching ship that launches missile satelites and deploys them in mid combat. Then your frigate could possible launch a volley of five or six missiles at once. Not sure if this will work in the SE5 combat engine.
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The goggles... they do nothing!

It was your own idea of using sentry satellites for your planets and warp points that gave me the idea to send them out farther on a scout.
If you can set up a system of sentry satellites in solar systems that are close to you, you shoud be able to see if any ships come close to your territory, let alone before they can threaten any of your worlds.
I have not had a chance to try this myself.
I will report back when I find anything out.

you can cloak satellites, but if you look at your cloaking device, it uses supplies, so you have to make sure you have a quantum reactor or maybe solar collectors after they are fixed

Until the other races declare you a super nasty empire, all declare war on you and use the greater number of planets & systems to out-reasearch you in warp manipulation. As that has happened many times with me:P

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

That is true but atleast with a Cloaked Satelite that has Sensors you can detect when they enter a solar system or get near your territories and planets.
If your sensors are advanced enough you will have the range to detect them before they can get to you.

In SEIV I used to send mine layers to lay minefields right on top of other empires' planets while they were allied with me, and then when they or I inevitably declared war later their entire fleet would be decimated by those mines within a couple of turns. I haven't got far enough in a SEV game yet to see if this strategy can still work.

Anyone ever read the Berserker books by Fred Sauberhagen? Basically their ancient world ships that patrol the universe searching out 'life', or "badlife" as they call it. They sterilize all the planets where life is and only meet significant resistance with humans.

My strategy was always to go pure stellar manipulation and play like tbe Berserkers. No politics, just warp in, destroy all habitable planets and leave. I never colonize worlds either, i just mine the aftermath of my destruction and move on. I even destroy my own homeworld after I build my first 'ship-building ship'. Very fun, and can be challenging if you play it true to the books.

I do like that berzerker idea. I'm going to give that a try when my SEV comes.
I'll make a quick mod that gives you that trait. Early planet destroying weapon, research and intel mods for ships/sats/bases. That should be all that is needed to make that one work.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

Never read those Berserker books, but it reminded me of one of the good ideas MOO3 had contributed, a race that I THINK were called the 'Ithkul.' Basically they fed themselves on other races. Adding or modding something like that into SEIV/V could be pretty cool.

I like your idea though and will try playing my next SEIV game like that. (My laptop has no 3D hardware, so SEIV will always have a place on it.)

I use sentry sats around all my worlds to ensure they have a LoS. It works well, and I've even come up with a nice modification for high-level colony ships; slot in a satellite launcher, pack on a satellite, then load up the people. Move the colony ship to it's destination, launch the satellite, and colonise!

Also a good idea to pack weapon platforms if you think a colony may come under attack soon after it's built. They're only 200kt each at the lightest variant and that's only 1 Cargo Bay Mk 1 (or less, storage capacity increases at higher levels) per weapon platform (And one with two-three high-grade Cap-Ship Missile Launchers can hold off most skirmisher attackers ) so you can very easily pack some portable firepower onto the colony ship. As soon as you colonise, the cargo is transferred into the colony, much like the loaded colonists are.

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"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
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Friedrich Nietzsche

Can you still recieve trade doing this? I would think that this would be a weakness, if the rest of the universe were in trade and technology agreements that you could not participate in. If the enemy cant reach you, then how could they be able to trade with you?

I build three kinds of colonizer:
1. Aeon Flux - sensor + all cargo
2. Miner's Daughter - mine layer
3. Bountiful Horizon - sattelite layer

The Miner's Daughter drops four mines just before warping out to the next system. Aeon Flux carries max colonials following behind the Miner's Daughter. And Bountiful Horizon can drop a sattelite anywhere in space that will keep alien worlds fully in view.

I've found that if you get level 2 in small ships you can get a sat launcher and room for 4 sats + 20m pop on a colony ship right at the start. That way explore, leave sensor sats and cononize all at once, though you do not get all 10 engines on still, no biggie IMHO.

Cloaking satellites don't work too well I'm afraid. They run out of supplies and therefore cloak juice rather quick, even with a quantum generator. You can put enough generators and solar pannels to keep the cloak on indefinitelly, but the enemy sees them just the same because they deploy uncloaked.

I've had lvl5 cloak-equiped satellites get detected in a system with lvl2 sensors. Therefore the AI either sees through cloaked satellites, or it's able to pinpoint their location in the brief time between deployment and cloak activation. I've had all of my cloaked satellites destroyed right away, but my cloaked exploration ship was never attacked when the AI had more than enough firepower to destroy it with no loses. All of that makes me think that you have to enter the system under active cloak if you're not to be detected.

That is the reason I only use lvl7 satellites for robo miner deployment, but nothing else. For all my recon needs I use drones. The beauty aboute drones is that they can move and warp. So you deploy your basic/tachion/scanner/cloaking drone outside the new system, cloak it and THEN send it accross the warp point. If it's defended and they have enough sensor tech it's just a drone. If you send your explorer ship accross and they see it... you get the idea.

The other thing about drones is that they can survey the system for a fraction of the supplies you mothership would consume without exposing it to harm. Deploy another drone after system entry and survey with two drones. Your mothership can then make a bee-line to your exit warp point thus saving turns of movement and supplies. After surveying the system, just leave a drone behind to patrol you rear, which satellites cannot do. And unlike satellites, drones can retreat across warp points if they're about to be attacked

Now if I could just put a repair bay on a drone I could take my own repair drones in my combat ships, but alas, no. Sorry, satellites and fighters don't take the component either ;(

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"No plan survives contact with the enemy"
Moltke

This is pretty easy to do against computer players, and doing so will almost double your capability to produce ships, resources, and research points early on in the game. The AI don't really put any troops on their planets so all you need to do is defeat the militia. About 50 small troops should be enough to take your the computer's homeworld with ease, and the survivors can quell resistance. Once I started a quick game with two opponent's homeworlds in my system. Capturing them easily made me twice as strong as any of my other opponents.

this is a GREAT way to boost your early game prospects, even more so if they happen to breath a different atmosphere than you. This instantly doubles your research (i tend to scrap some of their mineral miners to replace with research facs to start with.

Also look at what you can squeeze out of alien races at the start of the game, if they breath different atmospheres to you then get a one way imergration deal with them allowing you to "home" colonize their planets and make the most of them. Also see what tech deals you can get with them, some alien races will more than happily give you all their tech for nothing in return.

After that its just conquor conquor conquor, I tend to run 2 or 3 planet capturing fleets with 30-40 troops on them. Sacrifice the native population (assuming you have pop that breath that atmos) and let my people migrate there. Don't keep around populations that are loyal to anyone else as they tend to rebel quicker.

Oh and Capital missiles (or organic or crystaline) all the way, range 16 with ships that are quick enough to keep the enemy at arms length are really good

That's sort of like a network of automated EWS's, or Early Warning Stations. They see something, relay a message to you, and you can prepare for the enemy attack.

>:) I'm not a habitual cheater, but sometimes I just use all the cheats in the game at once, and then I sit back, build up my armies, and wait for another race to stumble upon my system. And when I do that, I go all Necron and 'awaken', then purge the galaxy of all life. >:)

I don't understand why you do that, because having access to other races is a huge advantage. You can conquer their planets so easily, thus giving you 10 times more ressources and research compared to closing all warp points and having limited amount of systems and planets.

my primary tactic is to imediately make 2-3 scouts (I like clustered galaxies for this) then send them out to find cutoff points where I can cover a single warp point per system and completely enclose myself (in standard galaxies I go out til I find an AI first then stop there maybe backtracking if nescessary to reduce the number of warp points) for this I use CSM armed scouts with lots of ordnance and fair supplies with hopefully at least a low level solar collector. once I find the chokepoints I sentry one scout on each (while I'm scouting I try to colonize every green within a system connected to my home system) (I often take ancient race or just galaxy explored since AI does better with an explored galaxy I tend to use that one more)

any world I colonize that has less than 80% minerals becomes a research colony unless it's tiny then it becomes an intel colony...

I'll make a few organics or radioactives facilities if I find planets with 125+ in those but usually only 1 or 2 per planet.

I tend to go for monoliths early because even though they are expensive the payoff later is huge...

once I get max'd ship spaceyards I make a mobile constructor for each of my guarded warppoints and then create a fighter base on each spot then set them to filling up the bases with fighters. (I shoot for spaceyards as soon as my tech income is high enough to let me push to 41 in spaceyards fast.)

I ignore reds and simply colonize every green within my sphere ASAP once I've defined the area. If I can I get a treaty for migration with any races I've seen with differing atmospheres but it's not a huge thing. once my tech income is really rolling in I grab atmosphere converter tech asap and then start colonizing reds dumping a converter on each.

I like to use organics and religious because the combo is really fun hehe... fate/nature/time shrines and the 3 organic replication vats, clone center, something else are all systemwide abilities that become really huge lategame (nature shrine caps at 22% improvement vs 7.5% for value improvement for example) the guaranteed growth rates for the clone vat thing means that I can colonize with low pop and still grow insanely fast since it adds X amount of pop per turn rather than increasing %growth (other one does that) the nature shrine being systemwide makes all my planets go up in value so that even if I never build another resource facility I'll still grow for a long time hehe.

AI's are not good at breaking warp point defenses so a small defense force can hold a warp point for a long time but I really like to get a starbase or at least 20+ sats there ASAP so if I think I can't wait til I get ship based yards fast enough then I'll instead put some CSM sats there for early defense. I tend to ignore cloaking for too long sometimes tho hehe... but my mobile constructors usually have tachyons. and my later scouts also.

guess that's enough of a novel for now learning the AI is the key to beating it though... the AI is very stuck in how it does things and once you learn how to exploit that it rarely ever proves a challenge again sadly... I play high/high AI diff/bonus and it's still far too easy

My tactic? Expand like mad, fortify the borders, and use superior economy to grind the enemy into the dust via massive, highly-teched application of military force.
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There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

crward wrote:

DimmurWyrd wrote:

guess that's enough of a novel for now learning the AI is the key to beating it though... the AI is very stuck in how it does things and once you learn how to exploit that it rarely ever proves a challenge again sadly... I play high/high AI diff/bonus and it's still far too easy

The dark side is calling: PBW....

sadly I have long since grown too impatient for PBW/PBEM games I have a LOT Of time on my hands and waiting even hours for a new turn drives me nuts (I did 112 turns of a solo game last night for example hehe) not to mention being on mountain time I can never make the early turns people seem to prefer.

I expand as fast as I can and put Satellites and Mines on all of the warp points. It really slows down the movement of everyone else, and lets me see anyone who enters a system. It doesn't allow you make many friends though, be prepared to take on the whole galaxy.

Hopefully when they get TCP/IP games going you can get more turns in a night

Cloak uses 100 supply per turn, you'll also need storage on the satalite for at least 100 units of supply, or mod the cloak so it can hold the 100 supply it burns every turn, without the supply storage buffer the sat will cloak for 1 turn then deactivate for lack of supply.

Only used it in hotseat game vs AI.
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I thunk therefore i wuz.

It's ashame that all the talented people here don;t get together and right an FAQ for the game.

- I'm to busy hunting Badgers

With the AI the way it is i find this strategy to be best.

On every planet i colonise i build at least research structures, on planets that have no breatheable atmosphere I ONLY build reserach structures on them. On others I usually build those solar resource generators that crystal tech gives plus other things like Space Yards, etc. By the time I get 140k research the AI usually has only about 20 or 30.

Also I try getting as many migration treaties as possible with AIs of different atmosphere, which ends up giving more facility space, which = more research and resources.

There is really no strategy, i guess, this is what I would normally its just the AI doesn't even compete when you play like this so its an effective strategy. Its funny having class 10 torpedos with 170 range and the AI has only class 2 anti proton beams or whatever.

As far as ships I use crystal tech usually so I load up on torpedos and shard cannons. I usually have one ship design that is 100% torpedos as well.

Also I build space stations or satellites around all my planets, satellites only on planets without space yards.

edit: forgot, i always have defences on all warp points that enter my domain, satellites and ships and later on starbases. I have yet to see the AI break into my territory.