Ok, to those of you who say siege rushes are a valid tactic... what, then, makes this game any different from any other RTS game and their rushes? Spamming any single type of unit makes for a boring game. Battles in this game should be about combined arms, not sending one single ship type in in vast numbers.

And, those saying to stop the attacks before they reach their target: How? I'm not being sarcastic, I'm asking as a new player that just can't figure it out. I've intercepted fleets like this, sometimes with every single warship at my disposal, they didn't stop to fight, they just raced on to their target planets. They've never hit my homeworld, but they have taken my outer colonies many times over.

I admit, I've only played as Advent so far, so maybe their defensive turrets need a bit of a boost, I'm not sure. If I was being attacked by a massive, varied fleet I wouldn't mind losing planets. I'm still being outplayed, but at least it's interesting, and I might learn about how to build a more effective fleet. All I'm learning from the AI so far is to win you need to build massive fleets of siege frigates, which makes me feel like I'm playing any other RTS game where one single unit dominates... which isn't very fun.

Two more excellent posts from people who understand my frustration.

/clap

Seems like the simple answer is to make siege frigates more fragile. Typically siege weapons of any kind are vulnerable.

I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more balance with planetary defense units either. Seems like a no brainer that a battlestation should be able to obliterate a number of ships pretty quickly if they simply park and start dropping bombs. Who would pilot a ship to bombard a planet and not even acknowledge the fact that a battlestation is railing them lol.

Personally I think it'd be cool if some / all of the defensive structures had some sort of point defense component that intercepted bombs (even partially). Would make ignoring defensive structures much more costly and would force a person to escort them properly.

Or perhaps adding a differentiation between being fully idle (bombing) and simply being temporarily stationary. Idle ships could receive substantially higher damage? Just an idea - probably a big change to implement but its similar to idea of being caught 'flat footed' in d20 type games and would make it so that large bombing fleets that just ignore an opposing force (ship or defense structures) would get chewed up fast.

Really, I have no problem with suicidal attacks. But, at least make them varied, and not the same thing over and over and over and over again. A proper suicidal attack might be sending siege frigates along with a few other ships to distract the defenses while the siege frigates do their work. *That* is strategy. Though, again, it'd make a boring game if that was all the AI ever did too.

In WW2 Kamikaze attacks by the Japanese did sink a number of ships. But, such attacks weren't the only strategy they used. (And, really, it was a desperate last-ditch strategy anyway.)

I agree, if you don't care about the ships - then they're just that, cannon fodder.

The siege rush doesn't seem to affect me as much, since I tend to have my outer colonies combined defenses and ships. My more curious note is how they AI will use this against one another, accomplishing very little, except trading planets to each other.

...now, if the AI learns to follow up their Siege Rush, with true combined arms/colony frigate...ouch time.

One thing that no one has really touched on is bigger maps and multiple players. Especially if they are human, sending off your fleet to attack someones production can leave you terribly exposed to another player. You are really screwed if he chooses the same siege strat. By forcing you to fight them where they choose the siege frig player has an advantage.

On the bigger maps there is simply no way to stop someone from amassing siege frig armies. Losing the outer colonies is annoying, but it is exceedingly easy to just rush the capitol and win, which is the main concern here.

Playing reactively and not pro actively is a surefire way to lose. The only thing that is going to always force a reaction from any player, at almost any state in the game, is them seeing that many siege frigates.

So, to counter, you either need enough scout ships to be watching every planet all the time, or some technology (which must be higher than siege frigate technology as I've never found it) to watch everywhere already. *And* you need a fleet big enough to attack the enemy shipyards and hit the fleet being built plus any defenses, without leaving you open for attack from other AI, and hope you can make it across enemy territory in time before the fleet launches, or it'll never stop before it hits you.

Doesn't really fit the quote mentioned above.

I still have a serious problem arguing balance in any 2vs1 scenario. A frigate rush just isn't feasible against an intelligent player in a 1vs1. It's just as easy for me to ass offensive ships/attack as it is for you to mass siege frigates and attack. There's absolutely no difference, except I'm scouting, and you aren't.

I have great respect for IC, and anyone who is interested can quickly find out that I am a HUGE Stardock fanboy (search my posts on the GalCiv2 forum). The only reason I am so stridently pursuing this issue is that frankly, this game was fun in beta, but since release, with the appearance of the AI siege spam, it's lost all fun for me. I simply sincerely want IC and SD to look in to this issue and fix it. There are a number of excellent suggestions in this thread (create real plantary shields, lower the HP of siege frigates, etc) and I am hoping that IC/SD listens.

With standard game speed and resource settings, it takes a bare minimum of three and a half minutes *just* to get the mere capability of building siege frigs if you go straight for them at the cost of all else. It then takes 45 seconds to build each one, and that's if you have the resources to do so (If you dropped everything, you won't).

In order to finance a seige rush, you'll at least need to get your flagship up and send it out hunting so you can get additional mines up on other planets. That will delay the initial availability of sieges a fair amount (not enough crystal to do both, and one mine gives you a pretty sad trickle).

Financing aside (and that's a big aside), it will take you seven and a half minutes to build ten seige frigs. For the cost of an extra frig factory (built while researching Krosovs) you can halve that... but that puts the total cost past 10000 credits and 1000 crystal, which is a very difficult price to ignore early-game.



For less money than that, a bit more metal, and a LOT less crystal (crystal being a big limiting factor early game), you could make TWENTY cobalts in less time, and have a strong fleet for creeping and colonizing to boot. By the time the siege player is ready, you'll have multiple colonies with resources rolling in, gained at least a couple of levels on your flagship, AND have a fleet strong enough to rip his to bits and be in shape to crush his homeworld shortly thereafter (regardless the status of your own capital).


It's all a matter of strategy. Siege rushes may be powerful against an unprepared player, but they're a huge gamble and are hardly unstoppable. Much like rushes in other games, a failed rush attempt pretty much guarantees your own loss against a competent enemy.

Ok, just to clarify my point. In the game I'm playing now, a 3-way FFA on a small map, the AI spent most of the game attacking me with siege rushes, keeping me from expanding beyond 3 planets, and making the outer 2 planets change hands so often I was constantly running out of credits. One AI would siege rush me, then the other, and I was stuck between them. This was frustrating, and to me, boring. It wasn't losing ground that bothered me. It was facing the same ship over and over and over and over again.

I finally decided to build a nice fleet by selling off the majority of my stockpiled metal and crystal to get the credits I needed, and built up a nice well-rounded fleet, I was preparing to strike one of the AI with it, to hopefully end it. I fully admit I probably waited too long.

Now, as of a few minutes ago, they ganged up on me, each sending a massive attack fleet to one of my two outer colonies. I managed to fight one fleet off with the defensive fleet I'd stationed at that planet, but the other decimated my other fleet which had 3 of my capital ships, 2 brand new, and most of my prepared attack fleet.

I lost that last battle, and it's probably going to cost me the game, but it was fun. I absolutely loved it. Being attacked by the siege frigates for most of the game wasn't fun at all, though. It was effective, but it wasn't fun.