nathanne@triax.com(Nathan Nelson) originally posted:

    I'm starting to feel like a real idiot because I can't seem to hold my
own against an AI HE opponent.  I'm just fine against everybody else,
but the HE just seem to become way too aggressive (not to mention
powerful) around turn 100.  I've tried everything from preemptive
strikes, to bolstering defenses and waiting, to simply running away
every time I see them, and nothing seems to work.  I end up being able
to hold my own until about turn 80 or 90, then their population just
explodes, and I'm doomed.  Can anybody give me any ideas??

rcroson@arcm.com(Robert Croson, Jr) responded:

>Try holding them off in the early game by placing a scout ship with an X-Ray
>laser at ALL planets that you are not going to colonize. Have two or three fleets
>with two mini-bombers waiting at a world with a starbase. As soon as one of the
>AIs sneaks past you and actually colonizes a world, send the bombers there to
>clear them out.
>
>It is vitally important to deprive them of those colonies. Especially the ones
>with all of the minerals. As soon as you can, mount an offensive against them.
>
>This strategy also works good against the AR AIs.

alex@cirfid.unibo.it(Alex Martelli) responded to Response #1 with the following:

Careful here, though!  At least in 2.6b, the mini-colony ships of the AI HE
appear to move too fast on the battleboard for a scout with movement 1
and a 1-range laser to kill them, except by very occasional chance --
and movement 1 is what you get (at least with a Fuel Mizer, but I think
with a warp 6 normal engine too), *except* if you're a warmonger (in
which latter case your 1/2 point battle movement bonus makes you easily fast
enough to catch and fry AI HE mini-colony ships).  If you're a JOAT,
you can design a destroyer with a maneuvering jet or two -- of course,
that's far costlier than an armed scout, but with careful micromanagement
you may not need one per planet.  Perhaps (I don't reall precisely)
you can make do with one jet, a fuel mizer, a fuel tank, and a couple
of Xrays (overkill, but what are you going to do with the second weapons
slot -- alpha torpedoes are pretty useless, even with a battle computer).

Build a few of these -- yes, that will badly hurt early development,
but you DO need them -- and place them in strategic locations -- most
of the time they'll be able to intercept, perhaps mid-space, the
outcoming mini-colonizers, and fry them.  At least as a JOAT you will
have _great_ vision, particularly if you take no advanced scanners,
electronics at +75%, and level 4 for +75% research areas -- 40 ly
penetrating, 160 ly altogether, for free, on _every_ scout, destroyer, and
frigate -- so you should be able to know exactly what's going on each
and every turn, perhaps with the help of a few cleverly placed scouts.
Oh, by the way, forget the ship designs you start with -- they all
waste precious, scarce resources badly needed for development in such frills
as armour (for the freighter) and scanners (for every ship) -- play up to
your PRT's strengths by designing scannerless ships... they're cheaper!
In fact, I find "Ultimate recycling" a precious LRT -- and use it advisedly
to "scrap fleet" most of the ships I start with, as circumstances allow,
thus recovering resources to compensate partly for the destroyer buildup
meeded to keep the AI HE at bay early on.  (as a side bonus, you get to give
better names to your newly designed ships than the goofs you have to start
with:-).  Takje care, because apparently (couldn't find that info in the
help file) you will only get the full 90% of resources back, from scrapping
fleets under UR, if your starbase's resource production is quite abit higher
than the resource value of the fleet you're srapping.  So, for example, you
can scrap your armed probe pretty early ()except that it does come in handy
for some very very early exploring), should wait a bit longer to scrap the
stalwart defender (ditto), and longer yet to scrap the cotton picker
(pity, because at least with OBRM it's truly a costly, huseless hulk,
but if you scrap it at once you will not get "value for money" from it -- so
at the start send it somewhere just to at least get a few meager Kt of
minerals!-).

So, that's for the JOAT -- and the WM, as I already mentioned, CAN (and
should) build up laser-armed scouts to fry minicolonizers (it may be
worth using a different design than your starting armed scout -- with a
X-ray laser rather than light phaser just because it's cheaper and you
need a LOT of them; also it may be worth to wait a tiny bit while you
research the rhino scanner, because you'll have lots of those scouts around,
and it would be a pity if they were half-blind, bat-scanner-only ships,
when little rhino scanners on each could give you at least _some_ vision of
your universe!).

Other PRT's I still haven't pitted against the AI HE, but I imagine that 
PP and AR would each have their own preferred style -- and I'm not sure
about what other races yet should do, except that, since movement-1 scouts
with range-1 lasers just don't cut the mustard against mini-colonizers,
it might anyway be a pretty bad idea to build up on them... you need to
research either faster ships or longer-ranged weapons.  Perhaps alpha
torpedoes with battle computers might help, though istinctively I tend to
doubt it (yes, I _do_ utterly dislike alpha torpedoes!-).

An alternative to the minibombers are freighters ready to load colonists and
drop them on the HE's new planets.  A small freighter will do nicely, and
even a minifreighter made of a colony hull with a fuel mizer and a fuel
tank may suffice if you're fast and/or a WM (remember, WM's are at an
advantage in ground-troops attack).  Freighters are cheaper than bombers,
lighters, and far more versatile -- your "troop transports", when not needed
as such, may double up as a useful carrier of minerals and/or colonists
between your colonies and/or remotely mined planets (also, if you're as
stingy as I am, a freighter cna usefully scoop up the salvage from all
the HE ships you'll fry mid-space -- hey, it IS minerals after all,
including a tiny but precious dollop of _germanium_...:-).

Of course, this works better for a fast-growing race, which won't miss a
few thousand people for a few years!-)

>This strategy also works good against the AR AIs.

And other AIs too, as long as they don't "look before they leap" and keep
sending colonizers to be fried by your scouts (the speed problem is
apparently not one except against HE's).  I like playing in a tiny universe
against 1-2 expert AI's and seeing how fast I can wipe them out -- with
a suitably designed race for the environment, something between 35 and 50
years -- seems to be a reasonable way to spend an evening:-).


Alex
--
 ____    Alex Martelli, Bologna, Italia -- email: alex@cirfid.unibo.it
 \SM/___ 
  \/\bi/     He who shall hurt the little Wren
     \/      Shall never be belov'd by Men.