Swarm of Fleas, or 1 Giant?

from GalCiv2 Forums
I'm just starting to understand the game well enough to play against "bright" enemies without fear of losing.
I just wanted to post about an experience I had in game recently.

The Thorans were sending out swarms of fighters, with stingers and no defences at all. (I have yet to see a civ use a different tactic, but then I haven't exactly played on "kill me now" difficulty yet either)

At first, I tried to imitate this tactic, and I found that I was defeated in nearly every battle. They always had just enough firepower to destroy my swarms.

So, I tried a new tactic, researched large hulls as quickly as I could, and started producing them with harpoons and point defence.
(On a side note, if you ever want to use a ship for more than defending its own star, put enough engines on it to make it scoot, else it will always be a day late to the battle)

Neways, soon my first "Harpoon Class" ship was built.
Before the second was built, that single ship had destroyed every Thoran ship in my territory, and was searching for targets in Thoran space.

I ended up building 5 of them, although I really think 2 would have been enough to finish the job. I didn't even need to escort my transports, there simply was no resistance.
Eventualy they started building frigates and even a few cruisers, again no match for the "Harppon Class" ships I built.

The moral of the story is, make your ships big enough to actualy hold some defences!

Eh.. ya... hope someone cares
13,127 views 17 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
depends entirely on the game and who you're facing.
putting major defenses on ships requires twice as much technology as weapons alone.
also, putting defenses on a ship in the dread lords campaign is just wasteful
a swarm of fleas has its uses too, especially if they're quick and can attack 1st.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, if you play your cards right, you can make a swarm of fleas quite a force to be reckoned with. Depending on the level of resistance at different areas you might have to leap frog with this tactic, but it has proven effective so far in my gameplay. You want to build up about 6 or 7 constructor ships and bring them along with your fleet. Then build a military starbase and upgrade it with all the ship assist modules you can. I'm actually actively debating using this tactic to keep from having to research ship weapons and research only starbase weapons/defense instead. I found that with 5 or 6 upgrade modules I took a fleet of 3 ships that had 2 points in beam and 2 points in shields (making the fleet a 6/6) and made them into a 12/18. The starbase itself was weak and the enemy tried to assult it directly, but I had a scout ship with me that saw them coming from a ways off and my fleet intercepted and destroyed the enemy with ease. If you're really just flush with cash, you can upgrade the starbase's own defense/offense with another 5 or so constructors.
Curtains - Customize Windows with additional styles
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I like to use a fleet of slow and tiny ships to protect my home planets (once orbital fleet managers are available) while I attack with larger, quicker ships. That way I can line my borders with military starbases and buff up those tiny ships that started at 1/0/0 attack up to about 3/2/2 attack. 7 of those in one fleet will easily cover me while I move in for the kill.

-Dewar
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
How far ahead in techs did you become be rushing to larger ships? There are many viable options in GalCiv2, and that helps make it a great game.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yes, I am still learning all the ins and outs... much like rock paper scissors, nothing will always win. You have to adapt to what the opponent is doing, and thats rare in a game.

In this case once I realised my strategy wasn't going to work, I completely shifted into research mode, all of my BC went to one thing: BIG SHIP.

Once I had that I refused to trade it with anyone fearing they would then trade to my opponent, and the tactic worked pretty well... this time, hehe.

I was just thinking... wouldnt researching all the miniaturization techs accomplish the same thing, minus the extra ship hit points? hrmmm.....
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
By contast, I have yet to build a ship larger than Medium and I'm doing well with that. Most of my military research goes into weapons, engines and miniaturization. Medium seems a good size for a design that many worlds can crank out in 2-4 turns even if they aren't specialized for it. Logistics important to ensure a large swarm, and engines are vital to ensure that you initiate the attack. When you start the fight, you deal damage first, and if the enemy doesn't survive the first volley he can't fire back. If the enemy is going for large ships, make sure you stay ahead on Logistics and keep those fleets full or he'll be able to put together more firepower than your swarms can handle.

Gnat swarm is ideal against Dread Lord ships, because they can only kill one ship at a time. You know going into the fight that you will lose a couple ships, but those who survive its initial attack will be able to fire back and take care of it. Gnat swarm is at its worst versus armed star bases, which can attack multiple targets at the same time.

Edit: For reference, I'm currently playing on Tough, but will step it up again for my next game.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yeah I've found I fare far better with swarms of fighters against the Dread Lords than with large capital ships, especially with high logistics and multiple fleets. I've still lost fleets to them, but I'm often pumping out enough fighters to create new fleets to effectively zergrush them.

Bear in mind, there's one thing numerous fleets of inexpensive fighters can do that huge hulls cannot: be at several places at once. If you're sticking with capital ships, you're not going to be able to pump out enough of them to cover all the bases. Individual ship survivability will be in most cases higher yes but your options are far more limited with capital ships.

The Dominion schooled the Federation in this aspect. If it wasn't for Sisko's guilt-tripping the Prophets, StarFleet would've been prostrate within a year.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I personally use the swarm tactic. I rarely build custom ships because I don't often go for killing every race to win.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It depends also on speed, two swarms fighting eachother, the one with faster movment usually wins (If the attackign power is roughly the same) because they shoot first!

Yes a big ship can own if you stick lot of defense on it and it has lot of HP's, BUT you need lot of research in defense tech :/
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The answer is different for defense and offense, and whether you're doing the campaign (for that, you're going to lose ships, so they might as well be tiny ones).

I found out the hard way that small ships on defense suck. I had 1-2 small/tiny ships around my border colonies with signifigantly better weapons and figured that would be plenty, especially since they had no engines in order to fit in more weapons. But once the enemies did attack, their defenses weren't up to par and my three tiny ships died on the first hit, doing absolutely no damage to the enemy. When I poped the single small ship out from a neighboring planet and attacked first, it still died, but it took a medium and a small ship with it (I had much better weapon/miniaturization tech). In contrast, the huge, full offense ship that they also hit as it was leaving its production line (on the other front) actually won its battle. Since they couldn't kill it in the first turn, it could shoot back and took out one ship per shot. It only had 2 hp at the end since it had 0 defense, but that was good enough.

So... for planetary defense, swarms of small ships are not a good idea, you want as large a ship as economically feasable, and put at least some defense on it. It has to survive the first hit to stand a chance. And unless you have some serious planetary defense bonuses built on the planet, you want to attack first, so pop the ships out and launch preemptive strikes when they get close (assuming you notice them...).

For offense, things can go either way. A lot of it depends on what kind of weapon tech and logistics the enemy has. If they have better weapons than you have defenses (i.e. dread lords), swarms of small/tiny ships are probably best. Against someone where you have the tech lead, I'd tend to go for bigger ships, but partly because I can fit more engines on them and ensure that I get the first shot. Not to mention the fact that added health from experience if they live through the battle really adds up (I had a full fleet of medium ships with 115ish health once, which is signifigantly more than the 72 hp my huge ships started out with).
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I tend to go with big hulls. That's probably the result of being research-focused and having a habit of getting a lot of industrial production.

Big hull, an engine or two, 2-4 of the best (damage per volume) weapons, and some decent defenses.

Unfortunately, I keep having to restart games because of stupid bugs and new patches, so I haven't tested this as much as I'd like.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I find myself building more small ships than anything else. I have Medium ships right now but I only have one Medium class, the Tornado MkI. I haven't upgraded it because the Blowfish MkIII and Wallfish MkIII have been doing everything I want so far. (Blowfish = high speed 0/8/0, Wallfish = no engine 0/12/0 for defense.)

I suppose I should go design a Tornado MkII, but the thing is so ugly I've just been waiting for the Spearman class frigate I made last game to be technologically feasable. (Ironically, the wallfish has more attack power than the Spearman does...)
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I like having a combined fleet. Fighters, Corvettes, Frigates, Destroyers, Battleships...you name it, I try to have at least ONE of it. I usually create a "flagship fleet" which has my biggest, most advanced, most powerful, most EXPENSIVE ship at the lead with a couple smaller support vessels [high class, too] along with. I then have my Heavy, Medium, Light, and Swarm fleets. The number of fleets I have really depends on the game, but usually they advance from smallest to largest in this order:

Flagship Fleet (Only 1, ever) < Heavy (usually two or three) < Medium (five or six) < Light (9 or 10) < Swarm (however many I need to make it an actual swarm )

Combined arms for the win! Of course, this all assumes I'm going out to kill somebody or something.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I was just thinking... wouldnt researching all the miniaturization techs accomplish the same thing, minus the extra ship hit points? hrmmm.....


that is exactly how I play.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I find that a good aproach to fleet building lies in the mixed units aproach, with diferent units focused on diferent things. That way you can switch your production of ships to meet the needs of battle against an enemy with a diferent specialization. For example, This fleet, consisting of a Manticore IV (4 laser 2 shield medium size), A Hailstorm BCR (3 laser 4 point defense Large size) and a Ragnarok BCR (3 laser, 6 armor and large size), with either a Warthog III (medium ship, 2 Mass, 7 shields) or a Niven IV (2 missile 9 shields) to fill out the 16 logistics for a fleet, can take and deal a LOT of punishment, and isn't slowed too much by specialized defenses.

By the way, my way of getting around the "same name" problem when upgrading ships is to attach a roman numeral to the end of a new version - works wonders for remebering what's what - especially if every ship of the same generation tech has the same roman numeral so you can remember what it's got without looiking it up

Bonus points if you can spot the 3 swiped names from sci-fi novels and games.
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
or a Niven IV (2 missile 9 shields)


Wow. I thought *I* tended to defensive builds.
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I am starting to like defensive builds as well. I am also learning to build mediums instead of large, they are almost as effective and they pop out quickly.
Its fun to watch a 1/beam, 6/pointD fight it out against a 6/missile heavy fighter, which the ai often seems to favor in my games. Almost qualifies as hilarious