The races for player, challenging the status quo (A little)

[Waterd]

Talking about the power of races, I feel I have some disagreement with some people, here is my tier of power of what makes harder and easier games.

Tier 1: I generally find these races boring, they are so easy to win with that games mostly lack tension.

1)Humans:
I feel humans are the easiest race to play with, even banning the act of asking AI to engage in war (if you have this Humans are super overpowered but my rule is to only do war suggestions if im in an alliance)
Its too easy to never get into war and convince people to vote for you, and with his good tech skill, is easy to grow. His Expert tech skill in force field allow you to have a nice tech to focus to trade and bribe people. My games with humans go in the line of , I expand, Make big planets, I vote for me, everybody votes for me, I win. I hate them.

2)Klackons:
The klackons have an insane start, and his bonus never dies off. Im not fan of construction technology, but i love having Excellent in something that I can tech to high tiers and trade with everyone.
The hardest part of the game is the early game, and klackons shine at it, though they aren´t much better than Sakkras. Except Sakkras bonus caps fast, and klackons bonus last the whole game.

3)Psilons:
Im not as fan of the psilons as everybody else, I prefer production bonus and diplomacy bonus, I don´t say they aren´t great, but I Think the klackons and humans are superior.

4) Sakkras: Their Fast start is great, and allow for easy early expansion that ultimately is the most important factor to decide games. The paleontology Excellence give them the tools to translate to lategame. However Sakkras are very suceptible to bad maps, a map without early good planets, may be very though.

Tier 2: The fair races, I find challenging to place this races, but I can win most of the time with them.

5) Silicoids: I find silicods bonus to be multiple, and most maps are good for silicoids. Its very hard to have a map where you cant expand fast. However Silicoids can be susceptible to early aggressors. I think the key vs early agressors, is sometimes, just let them have one of your planets.. Their computer tech allows them to compensate their bad tech in other areas, you can use that good computers to trade and steal tech, I like it.

6) Melkar: Honestly i play meklar very little, and I think if anything they are a lot better than what im suggesting here, but the few times i play them i feel like the lack of early game expansion tools like most people above, makes it not great, however, meklar ability to maximize planet utility is great, and I think computers is the second most important technology type. But the poor planetology, which is the most important, really hurts imo. I g uess you can just use his great computers to steal planetology

7) Darloks: I don´t know why some people hate darloks, I almost think they are not ranked higher because i guess if everybody say they are bad they must be bad, but im pretty sure my winrate with them is pretty high. Who needs production when you can steal everything? Who needs diplo bonus when you can make everyone fight each other? I feel darloks are the kings of comeback, you can start slow and then slowly comeback by stealing everything, yeah you need to get into war, but its easier to focus your production on combat when you dont need to invest in tech as hard.

Tier 3: Ugh its really hard to win with these for me

8) Alkari: Some people swear they are great, i don´t get it, propulsion is only good for the first 4/5 range, and then it blows. Ship defense is good for certain things, but has very limited use imo. I just don´t get it. The only reason I have them over cats and bears is that they make great bomber ships, which is great to be able to destroy bases and capture planets.

9) Mrrshans: They are bad, but they have a few strengths that I can use, unlike the guys below. Excellent weapons allow you for a tech to focus and have for bribing/trading. Their early game combat superiority allow you spend less resources in the early game planet fights.

10) Bulrathi: Probably the least usefull ability, with a horrible tech advantage. I guess at least their diplo is not as horrible as cats and birds. But I just can´t win with bulrathi.

[Psillycyber]

I disagree about the Alkari. Propulsion is very important.

Civil War cavalry general Nathan Bedford Forrest's maxim is suitable here. The victor in war is the side that gets to the battle "the fastest with the mostest."

It makes such a big difference having warp-3 or warp-4 engines on your ships when everyone else has warp 1 or warp 2. You basically need half as many ships to use as zone defense for your frontline planets. Unless you face attacks on multiple planets on the same exact turn (rare for the AI to coordinate things like that), you can have your fleet be in both places at once. Clean up at one planet, repeat it at the other planet. (Of course, you actually have to build a fleet, and I know a lot of players simply don't build fleets until the mid-game. But even just a single huge ship that can play zone defense is a huge addition to your planetary defenses. You can lure the enemy fleet into concentrating fire on the ship, and either the enemy targets the ship, in which case you retreat after you have bought time for your missile bases to give a pounding, or the enemy goes after the missile bases, in which case you continue to clobber the enemy. Bonus points if you build 2 or 3 different huge designs and can park them in front of a warp-1 enemy to keep them from even getting to your bases. Extra super duper bonus points if you can combine this with auto repair.

Plus, I haven't even touched on the Alkari manueverability bonus, which adds onto the bonus they will already have from having good propulsion tech. It is not uncommon to have 6 or 7 evade points higher than the enemy: 1 or 2 from better engines, 2 from inertial stabilizer (often in your tree), and 3 from the Alkari innate bonus. Battle computer tech is usually around the same vicinity as engine tech, so having this manueverability advantage means you will only get hit by 5% of the enemy's shots. Compared to the 50% that is typical, it's like having an armor on your ships that increases your hit points by 1000%. (The advantage is not quite so advanced against missile bases with the extra targeting computer on the missiles, unless you add on ECM, which actually becomes quite useful as the Alkari. Sometimes with them I prefer ECM over shields if I have to choose).

I agree about the Darloks, though. The Darloks are bad for diplomatic turtlers who want to make buddies with everyone. But if you can get war coalitions going and find a vulnerable enemy planet to hover over bomb, you can more than make up for the innate diplo penalty.

Edit: And I think Meklar are close to top tier. Maybe 4th place. With them, you can make up for a bad start by turtling and growing vertically. It makes Meklar games much less vulnerable to bad RNG (bad planet placement).

[Waterd]

I dont use much ships to defend, since bases are basically overpowered vs AI since AI rarely makes a good Base buster.
I would fleet only if i have intentions to attacks.

[Waterd]

Im playing a lto of master of orion, so starting next game, I will create a thread and post reports/youtube videos of my play so maybe people can tell me what i do wrong.

[Ianus]

The AI rarely makes a good base buster? Really? You have never lost a well defended planet to a swarm of 1000+ small Fusion bombers? The AI may not handle large-scale tactics well, but if they want one of your planets badly enough in the early game they will probably take it from you. I've noticed that if you can reach Class X planetary shields the AI tends to have a much harder time, at least until runaway Psilons show up with Neutronium Bombs.

[Waterd]

The AI rarely makes a good base buster? Really? You have never lost a well defended planet to a swarm of 1000+ small Fusion bombers? The AI may not handle large-scale tactics well, but if they want one of your planets badly enough in the early game they will probably take it from you. I've noticed that if you can reach Class X planetary shields the AI tends to have a much harder time, at least until runaway Psilons show up with Neutronium Bombs.

No, i wish the ai would show with 1000 fusion bombers, but they don´t.

[Psillycyber]

The AI rarely makes a good base buster? Really? You have never lost a well defended planet to a swarm of 1000+ small Fusion bombers? The AI may not handle large-scale tactics well, but if they want one of your planets badly enough in the early game they will probably take it from you. I've noticed that if you can reach Class X planetary shields the AI tends to have a much harder time, at least until runaway Psilons show up with Neutronium Bombs.

No, i wish the ai would show with 1000 fusion bombers, but they don´t.

Stacks like those are why I love my huge planet fortress ships:

*Heavy type II Armor
*Max Shields
*Automated Repair
*Warp Dissipator
*Repulsor Beam
*Throw some range-2 weapons on it. Doesn't really matter. This ship's job is to freeze deathstacks in place so your missiles can whittle them down, and not get destroyed in the process.
*Best warp available (max maneuver optional, though). The reason for this is, you only need 1 of these flying fortresses to patrol a sector of planets that are close to each other. If you see a stack heading for a planet, you can zoom your flying fortress there in 1 turn instead of having to build 3 or 4 huge ships, one for each planet.

[Waterd]

Finally i won with the bulrathi, the key? Not trying to get advantage of his useless bonus, just did the classic, expand, base defense, planetology, befriend everybody, then eventually build super fast bombers, and glass enemy one by one.

An interesting thing, is that i traded for impulse drives, with impulse drives, i could create missile boats that went , do 2 volleys, return to base, send again to the planet. And it was devastating, and that way i got all the planets from the darloks which wher emy first target. Im even more positive that the missile boat every turn volley trick is just too good. If your opponent doesnt have shields good enough to neuter your missiles, he just cant stop you.

[Psillycyber]

It is horrifying when the AI figures out how to build missile boats. I am getting my butt kicked in a game as the silicoids right now because runaway Psilons have built an unbeatable ship. Size huge, armed with a 5-rack of 26 Pulson missiles. 7 of those bad boys are coming at my home world right now. They will destroy all of my missile bases with their 3000+ damager per turn in two turns. Oh, and they have a hundred stack of medium antimatter torpedo boats riding along! My strategy of counting on repulsor beam/warp dissipator doesn't work against this sort of stuff. But what could I have done? I guess build about 150+ missile bases, as opposed to the 40 or so I have, and blow their ships out of the sky before their missiles can get to me.

[RefSteel]

It is horrifying when the AI figures out how to build missile boats. I am getting my butt kicked in a game as the silicoids right now because runaway Psilons have built an unbeatable ship. Size huge, armed with a 5-rack of 26 Pulson missiles. 7 of those bad boys are coming at my home world right now. They will destroy all of my missile bases with their 3000+ damager per turn in two turns. Oh, and they have a hundred stack of medium antimatter torpedo boats riding along! My strategy of counting on repulsor beam/warp dissipator doesn't work against this sort of stuff. But what could I have done? I guess build about 150+ missile bases, as opposed to the 40 or so I have, and blow their ships out of the sky before their missiles can get to me.

A big cloud of high-maneuverability fighters should shred ships like that unless they have repulsors or energy pulsars or something. You'll lose a bunch in the process if they target your ships instead of the planet, but it won't be nearly as bad as with the bases getting slagged. It's trickier if they've got the right specials to obviate basic fighters, but the AI rarely stumbles upon a truly unbeatable design; the trick is always to find the weakness of their fleets and exploit it. In this case, I might rely on missile boats of my own since they can be built all over the empire and all go to the same threatened world and force the enemy to split its fire instead of concentrating on the planet exclusively. I might even go with multiple identical designs to ensure as many as possible of mine get their payloads to strike home before they have to retreat.