Just found the secret to easily beating the AI on impossible.

Screenshot for turn 198 senate win on impossible difficulty ( small 2 arm spiral )



I did it on a small galaxy, but it would work on any size as long as you have AI's close enough for you to take their homeworlds in the early game.

Basically you immediately conquer other AI home worlds, starting around turn 15-20. The boost from taking AI sweetspot / perfect gravity homeworlds is the key to an early win on impossible.


To do this you use light cruisers crammed full of laser fighters. That's right, fighters, not missiles are the most overpowered early game combat tech.

This is for several reasons:

1. Missiles tend to waste their firepower overkilling on a one target ( how many times have you had all your missiles attack a lone scout only to ignore a mass of system defenders? )

2. Fighters are actually cheaper per damage then missiles because they can attack multiple times.

3. Fighters will defend your ships from missiles and other fighters. With missiles you have to shoot and scoot, which not only wastes valuable turns getting back to the system, but many times you cannot retreat fast enough to avoid getting hit by enemy missiles / fighters. With fighters you don't have to retreat, since they will defend you and also draw enemy fire.

4. Fighters have unlimited reloads every 90 seconds.

-STEP BY STEP-

Race picks:

*I used Silicoids because they get a mining boost and are comparable to Cybernetiks in terms of production in the early game. Plus their ships look cool :-)

Cybernetics would be the other good choice, but you can do this with any race as long as you do the right race picks ( below ).*

Farming ( DEPENDS )- all the way down if you're silicoid or cybernetik, otherwise probably average is ok. I would steal points from this if you need it, the home planets you take over will have decent food once they get going.

Mining ( SUPERIOR ) - because you will be very mineral hungry with this strategy and you can't wait for those mining improvement techs.

Manufacturing ( SUPERIOR ) - this whole strategy hinges on huge production to crank out ships so this MUST be maxed.

Research ( POOR ) - You don't need this, you will have enough planets to stay even in tech ( actually I slightly outpaced the AI in my game ) and that's all you need.

Trade ( POOR ) - Not needed.

Environmental ( POOR ) - All it does is cost you a little extra money. You can only get so much for overdriving your industry anyway, especially in the beginning. Lower this all the way for some free points.

Accuracy / Reflexes / Toughness ( MAX or POOR ) - I play with Bhurics patch which fixes these so they actually work. You CAN get away with poor in all these, but you will have to bring more troops, and therefore more transports, which costs you time. HOWEVER eventually you will conquer races with decent ground combat attributes, so it's only a disadvantage in the very early game. In the game above ( screenshot ) I played with all these maxed.

Diplomacy ( POOR ) - You don't need this really. I still don't understand how diplo works ( why is everything so archaic and undocumented in this game???! ), so I almost always keep this at poor. If you do know how to use diplomacy then theoretically it can be useful with this strategy.

Government Type ( ABSOLUTIST ) - For Monarchy / Despotism. I suppose if you start with Collectivist then you might keep that. But you really don't need any better then Monarchy / Despotism.

Starting Member of the Orion Senate ( YES!! ) - These are the most important 10 points you spend in the whole game. This "should" put you right next to at least a couple of other races ( and their home planets :-D ). Starting as a member of the senate also makes it much easier to win the senate victory ( if you're in to that ).

Citizenship ( ASSOCIATION ) - I'm still not sure how exactly this modifies your unrest, and whether or not the races you conquer adopt this value. But, I've had no trouble at all lowering this to: association.

Starting Planet Mineral Richness ( RICH! ) - Another very important pick. In the very early game you will be extremely mineral hungry. This is key to being able to run lots of factories and conquering your first race from the very start.

Starting Planet Biodiversity ( SIMILAR ) - A free 10 points, no real downside.

Cunning ( SLOW ) - you don't really need spies with this strategy, and they take way to long to train in the early game.

Creativity ( ORIGINAL or NORMAL ) - Depending on how many points you have, there are very good reasons to put this at original if you can afford it. The techs you have available can make a huge difference. Like getting fighter fusion cannons for instance. Otherwise you might have to make due with fighter mass drivers for a while ( ug! ). So a higher chance to get access to certain techs is good, since you likely won't be doing much trading or spying.

Special attributes ( DEPENDS ) - None of these are necessary really. Natural engineers might be ok if it's cheap.




Start a game and take a look at your star system. Use your colony ship to settle the best planet in your star system. Hopefully it's not mineral poor, because we need lots of minerals. Set both your planets to building infantry x 10.

Switch into Monarchy if you aren't already in it.

I always set my system and empire taxes to 2 and 6 respectively, this lets me max my oppressionmeter.

Setup your dev plans.

Obsolete all ship plans except colony ship and system colony.

Make 2 new ship plans:

( in both cases you should lower thruster speed to 1 for extra space )

1. Fighter Boat

Light Cruiser
1 LM laser ( this is mainly to keep these guys from retreating automatically in autocombat )
20 laser cannon fighters ( interceptor mount )
reconnaissance mission

2. Transport

1 LM laser ( this is mainly to keep these guys from retreating automatically in autocombat )
2 laser cannon fighters ( interceptor mount )
4 x troop pods
transport mission

The idea behind these is to cram as much stuff into them as possible, giving up combat mobility by lowering thruster speed to 1. You don't need to move in combat because the massed fighters will provide the necessary distraction and also destroy incoming missiles and fighters.

Set your two scouts to explore and find a route to the nearest AI empire.

Micromanage your capitol so you have mining DEA's on all broken and mountain terrain and you have factories on all flatland, except the government and alluvial farms you start with. For your other planet you want to heavily mine everything you can so you can run more factory DEA's in your capitol.

Basically you'll be pumping out most of your ships from your capitol at least until you capture another AI's capitol.

Once you have around 500 production points in your capitol you build 10 fighter boats and 2 transports ( maybe 3 transports if your racial ground abilities really suck ).

Now make a recon Task force with 10 fighter boats, and load the 2 transports up with 16 infantry each.

Send these 3 task forces ( + any scouts that are still alive ) to the nearest AI capitol planet. If you can strike at a planet without any bases ( missile / fighter ) to get rid of the system ships first then do so. Your 10 fighter boats should have enough fighters to defeat any defenses at this point ( before turn 30 ) provided you don't face both the system ships AND missile / fighter bases in the same battle. If not then get 5 more fighter boats and that should do it for sure.

Once the defenses are defeated then land your troops, and you should have enough numbers to do a massed assault and take the planet that same turn ( roughly 2 - 3 x the defenders ).

Now if you did everything right you should now own another sweet spot planet with around 20 population. These planets are powerhouses because of the high population, and most of the infrastructure should be intact. Now mopping up his other planets should be easy, all it takes are some transports. Don't go too far out of your way to take his planets though, just take the closest and nicest and you can take the rest later. You want to move onto the next AI ASAP before he gets too strong.

Now you get even more ships ( like say 20+ fighter boats ) and do the same thing to the next nearest AI.

Laser fighters will do pretty well until shields level 2, which is a long time. At that point you will need fighter fusion cannons or something similar, and those will stay good for a loooong long time. In fact I think I finished the game with those in the screenshot above. It's amazing what masses and masses of fusion cannon fighters can do.

Once you have 3 capitol planets you should be on easy street. Just set your empire to "autocolonize" and pump out fighter boats while you expand. You should own most of the galaxy in no time.

This post has been edited by Chris6713 on Jan 26 2012, 06:36 AM