Hi!

boy, if this game had multiplayer, you guys would just die against me. theres something to be said about covering your @ss... and covering both cheeks seperately, doubling your chances.

And while you're covering those places I'll hit you somewhere else. You can't cover perfectly everything, it just costs too much. For half your costs I can build enough ships that will destroy much more of yours, because my forces will be concentrated, and yours spread out defending everything... And when you'll finally make me retreat, you'll find your border planets bombed out with mass-drivers, and abandoned thereafter - about half the previous size and empty, while my planets will be intact, producing next wave of attack ships, maybe even with your stolen tech.

BR, Iztok

So what do we do to protect our planets ?

I do take time to protect my planets in a very basic way.

The AI usually attacks any of yr planets that r close to it. So I park a ship in orbit of my front line planets, this dicourages the AI hugely.

The ships I use for this duty r, frontline ships that r damaged, ships I have bought off other races (waiting till I can afford to upgrade them) and my ships that need upgrading and not suitable for frontline duty.

With this method, its very, very rare u lose a planet.

And while you're covering those places I'll hit you somewhere else. You can't cover perfectly everything, it just costs too much. For half your costs I can build enough ships that will destroy much more of yours, because my forces will be concentrated, and yours spread out defending everything... And when you'll finally make me retreat, you'll find your border planets bombed out with mass-drivers, and abandoned thereafter - about half the previous size and empty, while my planets will be intact, producing next wave of attack ships, maybe even with your stolen tech. BR, Iztok

ahhh but you're wrong. that's exactly what i'm saying. i cover EVERY SINGLE WORLD I OWN with a defense fleet, AND maintain 12-24 attack fleets, AND cover every world with full military starbase. and still gross 1500BC a turn .

You'd never get enough ships past my border to bug me, you'd have to pass through at last 5 attack fleets, and even then, if you managed to get a fleet or 2 past, my defense fleets would kill you. I'm total protection here, i'm a master economist, i have enough money in my games to support 8 ship fleets on each world, and just as many ships in 24 attack fleets. Not to mention i keep about 60 constructors in reserve. When i capture a system, i can make a decked out military base there in 1 turn.

You'd simply never get the oppourtunity to use your transports on any of my worlds. I've been playing galciv2 since it came out. in the entirety of that time i've lost 2 planets TOTAL, ever, out of countless games. Now i'm not saying i'm undefeatible. There is a strategy out there to counter everything, but what i am saying, is once i reach a certain point with my defensive strategy, there's virtually no way to penetrate it. I don't fight wars in my own territory, i never give anyone the chance.

ahhh but you're wrong. that's exactly what i'm saying. i cover EVERY SINGLE WORLD I OWN with a defense fleet, AND maintain 12-24 attack fleets, AND cover every world with full military starbase. and still gross 1500BC a turn . You'd never get enough ships past my border to bug me, you'd have to pass through at last 5 attack fleets, and even then, if you managed to get a fleet or 2 past, my defense fleets would kill you. I'm total protection here, i'm a master economist, i have enough money in my games to support 8 ship fleets on each world, and just as many ships in 24 attack fleets. Not to mention i keep about 60 constructors in reserve. When i capture a system, i can make a decked out military base there in 1 turn. You'd simply never get the oppourtunity to use your transports on any of my worlds. I've been playing galciv2 since it came out. in the entirety of that time i've lost 2 planets TOTAL, ever, out of countless games. Now i'm not saying i'm undefeatible. There is a strategy out there to counter everything, but what i am saying, is once i reach a certain point with my defensive strategy, there's virtually no way to penetrate it. I don't fight wars in my own territory, i never give anyone the chance.

Before u had a chance to set this up, I would have conquered all yr worlds. Attack in GC2 ALWAYS beats defense.

So why do you need Orbital Fleet Managers and Planetary Defense structures?

Nice point. Touche!

ok, screenshot

every light blue dot is one of my worlds protected by a defense fleet, stats of which are circled at the bottom right. All Defense Fleets are identical.

every red circle is alpha fleet, stats of which are circled at the bottom left. All Alpha Fleets are identical.

Each orange circle is a fully upgraded military starbase.

The purple territory is brand new, surrendered to my by the yor a few turns ago.

teal circled worlds are new former yor worlds who do not yet have defense fleets.

ok, screenshot

Impressive. Clearly a lot of work went into this. It sure looks to me you easily have all the firepower you'd need to simply wipe out all opposition. I would have to 2nd ConQuesci's comment about your enjoying the management aspect of the game. Clearly this can be a successful strategy against the AI and if this is what you enjoy then far be it from me to suggest you do otherwise.

However, in my opinion, I don't think this would be as successful against a competent human player. But I can also see that there's legitimate argument for this strategy. The only way this could ever be settled would be mano a mano in a multiplayer duel to the death.

Clearly, with you putting this kind of effort into it, no amount of argument of the superiority of offense over defense is going to sway your opinion. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree, at least until we get multiplayer.   

Well i think it's fine to agree to disagree, i was just trying to make the point that with the strategy i was talking about, at a certain point, it's not as easy as some people were saying to just waltz into my territory and do what they please.

I would have to agree that once you have this set up there's certainly going to be no waltzing going on here. Whether you can be beaten from this position at all remains to be seen. Clearly the best shot to beat it is to do so before it's fully implemented.

It's very interesting to see the variety of game types that can be played. This is clearly one that I didn't anticipate. The picture is truly worth a thousand words, without the screenshot I really couldn't picture what it was you were trying to do. I sometimes do something a little like this for research.

I play slow tech with no tech trading. I also play metaverse games so I don't mod anything. One thing you can do to increase the tech component of your score is to build a dedicated research planet. I try to find a PQ26 that upgrades to PQ32 on going neutral. I then fill the planet with neutrality learning centers, make it my tech capital (100% research bonus) and add the omega research center (50% research bonus). Just as long as the planet isn't in the dead center of a sector you can put 4 economic starbases in the same and three adjacent sectors, fill them with maufacturing modules that once full give a 24% bonus to the SP, MP and RP to your research planet (and all your other planets in the influence area of the starbases as well). You can get 16 starbases for a total research bonus of 384%. That plus the 150% from tech cap plus omega research gives a total bonus of 534%. I've gotten over 8,000 RP's per turn using this. This makes short work of the tech tree and really maximizes your tech score. I've described this to a few folks and their opinion is generally that this is interesting but probably not something they would do just because it takes so long to set up. This isn't something I do every time, but it's a different method of play that adds variety to the game.