What am I missing?

from Stardock Forums
Ok. So I've updated to 1.03 and the game has gotten to be no fun for me ever since. I've been playing Normal on all with medium size galaxy, loose clusters, occasional habital planets and I continually am getting my butt handed to me. Before, I did just fine and managed ot keep my stuff going, but now something's changed. I can not keep up with the AI on tech, money, military strength, and the d*mn thing keeps bullying me for money I can't pay it or declaring war on me and destroying everything. It doesn't matter if I have 2 systems or 8, I can not keep up with the AI (even when it has only 2-3 systems).

I am unbelievably frustrated. This usually happens as I'm going into the midgame and I have Battle Axes, a couple trade routes, and decent production. I can't even get to Battleships before I get crushed. What the hell changed to make this game such a frustrating pain in the ass, where before it was a challenge?
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Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Lower level? You're telling me the game has gotten that hard from one patch? I played and beat 3 games at normal level pre-patch, now I've played and lost at least 6 on version 1.03. I've tried switching my strategies from not colonizing as much to going nuts, from working on one tech path, to another . One game I had a grand total of 10 planets and I STILL couldn't compete with the AI. That's why this is so frustrating.

What's especially irritating is there is no way to keep the AI from bullying you. Period. End of story. And when 3 different races each ask me for 1000 bcs (when I'm at -300) or they will offer me 1 for 1 tech trades but you can never initiate one (even though my incredible ability at diplomacy gives me an advantage) and the best you can get is two of yours for one of thiers. And honestly, I'd be very surprised if all I need is more practice. Just because new strategies are developed for the AI doesn't mean difficulty levels change between patches.

So what's the magic bullet? Was it really meant to be this much of a difficulty increase from 1.02 to 1.03?
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
To stop this happening on normal do three things:

1) tech rush to diplomatic translators, then rush buy the trade good

2) tech rush to corvettes (while trading as much tech as possible BUT NOT the trade good)

3) build loads of corvettes

These three simple steps should greatly assist you. After you do this you should then research any techs that give access to trade goods. Any trade goods you can build you should always rush buy. ALWAYS.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Oh I should also say that you should use Mitrosoft to rush buy- the lease is relatively cheap per turn and it is VERY likely you will finish before having to fully pay it of anyway...
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Yes, one patch did make a difficulty difference. A lot of folks had to drop a level down and pick the slack back up because of a few changes. Luckily, I am still wading along on challenging, but I am not about to go up now. Need some new skills for that.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
As I've stated in another thread. I find anything below intelligent (painful) incredibly easy. I place my sliders to 70,0,30 to start, with tax about 55 and spending at 100%. I hyperexpand while rushing toward diplo translaters. After I get those, I'll rush either aphrodisiac or phasers...depending on if I make first contact. Once you have your initial wave of colonies out, have the core worlds start on constructors. One you hit phasers, switch your constuctors to starfighters. They're next to worthless in combat, but they do boost your military rating enough to keep the AI off your back. At some point after you got your military in place, THEN cut over to a more balanced pattern, like 40-30-30.

Once you get well ahead of the AI on the military graph, congratulate yourself, its just a simple matter of keeping your edge the rest of the way. This seems to work on all levels up to genius. Genius is where it finally gets a bit tougher, but its still manageable.

SeanB
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
I've been using the same stratagy Forceinfinity just outlined to win my games lately, and it has been working well.

A couple of things I would add to that is to switch your starfighter production over to corvettes as soon as you research it. They have the same production time and maintenance as starfighters, but slightly better stats.

You shouldn't be using them as your actual warcraft after the beginning of the game, but I've found that corvettes stacked into a fleet are actually capable of defending against dreadnoughts and avatars with minimal losses. So, all those corvettes can be useful to spread around your vital planets and resources to absorb damage for you. Just make sure that your have them linked together into fleets, and that you are just defending with them, not attacking. You'll want to have a good number of dreadnoughts and such to do the bulk of your fighting though, because they will eventually tear through all those corvettes and leave you defenseless.

Also, you might consider giving priority to researching techs that give you different types of ships. The AI prizes these techs above all else, and you can usually get quite a few techs in exchange from them for each one. Go around to each race, including the minor ones, and see what you can trade to keep up with your technology. Unless it is a race you intend to destroy really soon. ;)
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
You shouldn't be using them as your actual warcraft after the beginning of the game, but I've found that corvettes stacked into a fleet are actually capable of defending against dreadnoughts and avatars with minimal losses. So

This surely is some kind of bug that myself and Drank have also noticed previously. I ran the simulator on dreadnought vs corvette and in 10,000 trials, the dreadnought would win 100% of the time with 1hp loss. The avatar would win 100% of the time without damage. That means that the dreadnought could mow though 50 corvettes before getting destroyed. But like Mike, I have seen smaller fleeted ships blow up much tougher opposition while defending. Is there a fleet defense bug?