Losing against easy AI

[Rcentrone]

I've played sins 1 for a long time. I usually start a new game by setting AI to easy and defensive posture. just to get a feel for research, gameplay, etc. I've always won. In sins 2 playing as TEC I get to a point where I am ready for tier 4 military research but can't break out enough to secure more planets for more research spots. Advice? In one game I jump to an enemy planet blocking my expansion with at least 10 capital ships and numerous cruisers and frigates and repair ships and get my ass handed to me by one starbase, multiple hangars , recharge stations and a moderate size enemy fleet. Getting frustrated.

[chris.mcgrory1]

maybe play a bigger map with more planets? and i would suggest playing on hard and unfair so you can really learn what to do and not do, best thing you can do early is max out your eco on planets along with mining, only get enough civilian research stations that you need for colonising planets early on so 4 civ stations, then only get military stations to level 3(15) mil stations, i think then you can get 1000 fleet supply, but the 1000 fleet supply is priority, dont be wasting time and resources on research or planet structures that you dont need early, i suppose the best way to look at it is, you have objectives you need to complete early game, then mid game then end game,

[ArcticISAF]

Play again. Play on a three or four player map with you on a team with one of the AI. Easy may be easy, but if you're screwing around for a few hours and it builds a starbase with defences and a fleet guarding it, all those units and buildings have the same stats as any other mode. And defences work best with a fleet helping it. Move your fleet around and fight away from the defences.

Second response - leave the system and build a bigger fleet. Capital ships are nice but like in Sins 1, they're not the end-all be-all.

I suspect you'll beat the easy AI the second time around.

[Chris.T]

No offense I can't imagine how slow you must be playing to fall that behind Easy AI. I would suggest just watching some guide videos or streams to see what others are doing without actually seeing how you're playing I can't give you much advise other than try to pause when you need time to think about something and build your economy faster and expand faster. Sin1 AI was terrible and depending on its setting would never even attack you. The AI difficulty in this game basically determines how soon and how big of a force the AI will invade you with so you should be using that as a point of reference for how far behind you are because you shouldn't be behind the AI until maybe unfair AI when their money/production cheats start to outweigh what you can do.

[This PC]

If the easy AI is outpacing you, you have work to do on your gameplay ? Am not trying to be demeaning, but the easy AI is absolutely lethargic lol. It's very restricted on command inputs. You'd input even less than that ? Or maybe it's the choice of inputs that is wrong. :P

Concerning the starbase thing, fleet composition problem. In sins1, it was mostly about having more supplies than your enemy, in sins2, units have their purpose. Your described fleet composition tells me nothing, it could be 1 kol with 9 marza and 80 javelis, or it could be 10 akkans with 80 gardas. The former will obliterate planetary defenses without losses, the latter won't even damage them. Gardas' only utility in sins 2 is to shoot missiles and strikecrafts.

Pay attention to pierce value on your units, and durability value on your targets too. Javelis have big pierce, they're meant to damage durable targets, cobalts have 150 pierce, they can barely damage a starbase.

Sins2 is not brainless like sins1 was, everything played the same and there wasn't really any strategy in there, or at least, you could achieve minimum viable result by just pressing random buttons. Not so much anymore.

Another thing is... micro your fleet, don't just watch it die to the well's defense haha. Focus your javelis/bombers and other high pierce units on durable targets to take them down fast. In your case, the difference between macroing and not is your fleet splitting, 2 battleships running after a trade ship, another running after a scout, 2 attacking hangar defense, another complaining because they pursued a unit right in the middle of enemy fleet and losing shield, etc... If you focus your units, you diminish like, the efficiency of the enemy's repair options and as you take down stuff, you'll start taking less damage, which will make your fleet last longer, etc...

Understanding the purpose of your units and actually commanding your fleet like a commander should get you to Hard, easily. Also not having enough planets to even do your research is probably a consequence of not being diligent and fast enough in the early game. Starting with a sova, picking up missile battery skill, and turning its fighters into bombers will help you be faster in the early game, cause I assume you're using akkan, sova is like 2.5 times faster early game. Sova can clear gravity wells on its own (you should try to avoid that though), akkan can't.

[Hurricane]

Planet items add research points.

[Rcentrone]

Thank you all. Alot of good points. I am guilty of moving slowly and advancing defences. I do need to "get out more". I also waste time on alot of research. I think all of your points are valid. Thank you for taking the time to help!

[This PC]

Originally posted by Rcentrone:

Thank you all. Alot of good points. I am guilty of moving slowly and advancing defences. I do need to "get out more". I also waste time on alot of research. I think all of your points are valid. Thank you for taking the time to help!

At the beggining of the game, try not to focus defense, focus on grabbing as much territory as you can, spend the money you'd spend on defense on fleets. You should only really spend on defense once battle lines have been drawn and your planet is right next to the enemy's. If you need to reinforce the planets behind that, do it when you have a capable fleet and a fair bit of resources, to the point where building said defense won't even dent your fleet production, either because you're at max supply or you have a fair bit of income. You should use your fleet to defend yourself early game, though on easy, if you push fleet early on and you understand like, what your units are good at, you probably won't have any more problem continuing through the AI than you would capturing early planets. :P

Have confidence in yourself too! Try stuff, mess up, make mistakes, it's how we learn. Also use pause!! Don't hesitate to pause for an hour to read your whole research tree, planet items, etc... to consider your options. Once you've done that enough, you'll know your options instinctually. ^^''

I also feel like you have the 4x approach, where you move methodically, focus on your economy and diplomacy with your neighbours. Nonono, this is an RTS, it's war -all the time-. Your empire is all in the service of war. Game is not about empire management, it's about war, all the time, lol. You build your economy to better do war, there's no other reasons to do so on sins. Be aggressive, it will make you a much better player. ^^ Bit of a mentality shift to be had when you switch from a 4x to an RTS. I played RTS' well before 4x's myself haha.

[Sídhwen Khorest]

Originally posted by Rcentrone:

Thank you all. Alot of good points. I am guilty of moving slowly and advancing defences. I do need to "get out more". I also waste time on alot of research. I think all of your points are valid. Thank you for taking the time to help!

Your main defense should be your fleet. Don't even bother building defensive structures for now. Take 4 or 5 planets then look at the phase lanes and see which planet makes sense to park your fleet at. Invest in your economy and tech a bit then make a fleet to push out at around the hour mark. See if you can't just win from that push.

If you fail, try again focusing on hitting that hour mark, this is called a "timing attack" and will help you focus on cutting the fat out of your build order.

[VoiD]

As with all RTS games, the initial build order is key.

Your initial choices as well.

Mess up this part and the entire game goes to hell.

I'm no pro, but I usually start with capital, a few corvettes, keep maxing up taxes & mining at the capital while building lab structures and stations for T4 as I get more economic upgrades in T1.

Always go for the planets you can colonize imediately, taking everything inbetween and giving priority to the planet types & their needed research on your way.

Max everything related to economy on every planet you take, and you might want to get a few military upgrades on your bordering planets/chokepoints where you expect enemies to invade, having more HP (and possibly a few turrets) can delay them long enough for your fleet to arrive.

Before your first engagement you should either have 2 capitals (depends on the exotic roulete) and get over the 100 supply limit with units, even if they are trash units, you'll need something to fight the AI. After that the game gets more relaxes.

At least, on the higher difficulties (unfair+), that's how I play.

Also, if you're trying to play Tec, don't, they suck, and if you insist ignore trade stations and just use extractors like everyone else before your first engagement. You can go for stations early, if you're confident you're just that good, or the AI is that bad, but it's just not worth it until you can get their upgrade, they are also too costly.

Also, forget about the tec colonizer capital ship, it sucks, it might be THE worst ship in the game for your early engagements, taking this means you have no capital, just take the carrier instead, it's several times stronger.

If you're playing the other races just do whatever and it will work, specially vassari, you could even go straight towards their capital and win if you don't feel like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around.

[Rcentrone]

OMG! You people are great! I am a 4X player and I need to learn to fight the war. Again. Thank you all so much! You've all been instructive, supportive, and patient. I appreciate you all!

[Hurricane]

Tec eco does suck and that's correct the tec colony capital is terrible never ever build that ship

[FatalError]

are you playing without pause? If you don't waste a lot of time by playing too slowly your eco should be better and you should have more stuff than the easy ai. So play with pause to learn the game and it should be np. The ai is very passive so just start with a combat focused capital ship, make a few frigates and start clearing the planets, focus whatever colony tech you need, make a colony cruiser to colonize. Get eco upgrades on your planets asap cause you'll need credits. When fighting use your big ship to jump in first and aggro and tank the enemies. If they have a lot of missile frigs make like 3-4 flak and you're good, you can just ignore the missile ships and kill them last. Just let your shields recharge and keep going. Also disable autocast on the abilities and micro your ♥♥♥♥ manually, otherwise the dumb ai will waste all the energy. Frigates are weak vs ships with high durability, but once the ships armor is down your frigs will do good damage, so focus fire your ♥♥♥♥. Keep the weak ships behind the big ones. If a weak ship gets attacked, pull it back. The ships will start healing when not in combat. It should be enough to even clear the derelicts and get the resource boost early. Then just go all eco for a while, industry upgrades, civilian research bases. mines. Also a few trade stations are nice. And you can buy/sell ♥♥♥♥ on the market if you're short on a resource. Try to always have a research queued. You'll soon be swimming in cash, then spam military labs, until you have gone to lvl 2-3 with civil and military. Spam research upgrades on planets and research military, focus on supply, high penetration ships, planet bomber ships, combat upgrades (the good ones, but you can just get all once you're rich af), get more capitals as soon as they become available. (to get more capitals you need exotics so build survey upgrades or a refinery) Then spam ships and make a death ball and just kill him. If you don't waste too much time he shouldn't even have a starbase.
Also your scouts should be on auto explore so you'll see if he has a base long before you attack. Ships with high penetration and long range counter defenses. So missile ships, gauss, whatever,

Basically get just enough ships to start killing neutrals, get eco upgrades on planets, colonize everything, eco tf up, don't need defense cause the ai is passive, once you have money just go all military labs and max out supply and crush him. If your start is good, your eco will snowball much quicker than his and it's over.

You can also do a rush, just go into planet bomber and missile ships early and just get like 1 supply upgrade and max out supply at 250 and just go attack him and he will die.

[Chris.T]

Originally posted by Rcentrone:

Thank you all. Alot of good points. I am guilty of moving slowly and advancing defences. I do need to "get out more". I also waste time on alot of research. I think all of your points are valid. Thank you for taking the time to help!

first thing you do every game if you play Tec is build the carrier or battleship your choice either is fine and send it to fight the closest ateroid of moon it doesnt need help to take it for you while you build 1 civic 1 military and que all your commerce/mining on your first planet. Then go from there maxing out your fleet while you speed run taking 4-5 planets. Soon as you find the AI youll know where you start building defences as they will immediately attack your closest planet to themselves if they scout it and see nothing there. Only get researches you're actually gonna use and be aware that most of the early +5% weapon dmg upgrades are fairly bad to get early and youll get more out of the armor stuff and hull uprades. best of luck deff check some streams or lets plays

[RaozSpaz]

Originally posted by Rcentrone:

I've played sins 1 for a long time. I usually start a new game by setting AI to easy and defensive posture. just to get a feel for research, gameplay, etc. I've always won. In sins 2 playing as TEC I get to a point where I am ready for tier 4 military research but can't break out enough to secure more planets for more research spots. Advice? In one game I jump to an enemy planet blocking my expansion with at least 10 capital ships and numerous cruisers and frigates and repair ships and get my ass handed to me by one starbase, multiple hangars , recharge stations and a moderate size enemy fleet. Getting frustrated.

This is just personal preference, but when fighting the AI as TEC I have two very particular build orders.

If the enemy is being aggressive, I will get my tech to 8/8 and then go up to 15 military before pushing to 25 civ. The 15 military is to grant me access to my Titan, which for both TEC is very valuable.

If the enemy isn't being super aggressive, I leave military at 8 and rush up to 25 civ first. TEC get 2 VERY powerful techs at 25 civ, one of which gives you +5 slots on your capital which you can use to start pushing your military up.

EXPLANATION

The typical reason I stop at 8 tech is because a lot of your 'good' things are acquired at 8 tech. In the case of Military you get access to Starbases and their production facilities [super useful for the defensive TEC]. For Civ you get your first trade up, as well as your big culture tech. Sounds weird wanting a culture tech, but its pretty potent.

Military 15 is the other big step as it has your Titan locked away. You dont want to get shoehorned into not having access to your titan. For Primacy it is bar none an extremely powerful warship, which is only further compounded if you eventually get 25. The Ankylon is a bit of a force multiplier. Getting it with its first and second ability [shield surge is a bit weird] makes it a massive damage dealer if it can get in the middle of an enemy fleet.

Once you get to the point where the lines have been drawn, always try to keep at least 2 of the grey materials on standby so you can immediately build a starbase when you take a planet. If you are Enclave, try to keep 4 grey and 1 yellow for a starbase with its production facilities and garrison. Speaking of garrison, never underestimate its value. Garrison with even a single light factory can still delay an AI for a while. Hopefully long enough for your fleet to show up.

[CptnCankles]

I always start off expanding as quickly as I can until I start to get to more "open" territories (meaning planets where you can be attacked from multiple angles). Then I hunker down and defend and wait until I can build up defenses and the fleet (if you expand too far too early, then you risk being overextended without the economy to back it up). Then I scout and look for the strongest opponent and engage them (can't risk that fleet invading if you go after the weakest) while keeping an eye on my back door. Usually I don't have an issue progressing. After you wipe out your first empire, you get all their planets for income and then you begin to snowball.

This strategy works for me playing on unfair.