How do you beat Cruel AI's?

[Muton]

I mean the cruel AI attacks me right away with a big fleet for the time period.. 5 minutes later I have a Titan on my doorstep 20-25 minutes into the game. This s**t is for real. Got a medium large random galaxy with 2 Cruels and 3 Unfairs

[GoaFan77]

Cruel and Viscious AIs get a lot of resource cheats. You pretty much have to abuse the AI's terrible tactics for fighting Starbases and defenses. Let them suicide their massive fleet on your defenses, level up your ships, eventually launch a counter attack and take a planet from them. Build up defenses on that planet and repeat.

It's a very slow, WWI style attrition match.

[Muton]

Yes agree...but I wasnt able to get that far, no starbase up with 4 planets before it launched fleets / Titan at me.. I was able to beat this game setup once before, guess I got lucky being far enough away from the Cruel

[Mr Said]

There is another way. You can go into game files an do what the "Cruel AI " do, cheat. I go into the files an add resources. 30,000 . Call it a head start. Open windows file explorer in the task bar. go to where your game is. don't forget to save the file after you've made your change's.

[z|A|bik2]

Or you could watch me beat 2 vicious ais ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9cMr6-2DM4&t=1164s

[Sugam]

I usually play a game on a huge map with max AI's all cruel and unfair. The trick is in the first few minutes you have to claim vital strategic choke locations, even skipping the closer ones to you to only claim them later for the vital resources. After you pick out one or two of these choke points, research repair stations, starbases and entrench the living god out of those places while slowly and carefully calculating what you can spend to research into titans. Forget building ships for a long time, they die way too easy. Knowing when to trade is also crucial tell you have a good line of defense and your titan to back you up. Also play to your races strength to the extreme. Vas for early exp and phase missiles, tec for repair bays, covenant for its OP meteor showers.

The AI is a cheating bastard but its still limited to its fleet size and tech. If you hold out, in time, you can even the playing field and start crushing them one at a time. Its fun.

As a side not, I use to get my friends to play with me and it was funny to watch them freak out over the aggression of the AI.

[chaosbringer42]

The easiest way to beat cruel AIs is to use multiple star systems. It messes up the AIs priority pathing so they end up jumping between stars ALOT rather than just bearing down on you.

[jjs82x]

If cruel AI is too much, dial it back. No one is going to take your man card away. The game is meant to be enjoyed. I find "Hard" AI to be plenty of challenge. If you want to take on a cruel, then maybe first try teams, with the cruel teamed up with 2 hards, and you teamed up with 3 hards (and lock teams).

[DaBo81]

I've managed to beat cruel AI setting with Advent loyalists and I don't even consider myself to be a good player. It's doable but you need to have a good understanding of a faction and it's strengths and play to those in order to compensate for the AI's massive econ advantage. I've played a few games with Advent loyalists now so I feel comfortable with them. If I played enough with TEC or Vasari, I'd probably figure out ways to use them at that level too - but I like the psyker girlies so I'm going to stick with them for the time being.

[Muton]

my setup is medium large with 4 unfairs and 1 cruel with no teams and I never do any of the diplomacy research. I can win that assuming i dont get hit by the cruel right away

[DaBo81]

Yes, perhaps having a mix of unfairs and a cruel is a good approach. The doppelganger map is a good one too as you can fortify your star as an excellent chokepoint. The first time I beat 3 cruel AIs was using this map, but the set up I normally use is 4FFA random cruel AIs with random medium map, minor factions, militias, pirates, diplo win, capital win, allies win.

There's a lot of good info on this site:
https://sinsofasolarempire.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page

Zabik has also kindly written guides for TEC and Vasari that give lots of tips on how to improve - that guy is very good at Sins.

As for me, I'm just a mid level player who has recently got back into the game after not playing it in years, so I think there are people who could give you better advice than me.
I'll tell you how I approach Advent Loyalists and if any of it is helpful to you, then that's great.

[Muton]

where can i find his guides? I read that having a map with more than one star can disable the computer controlled enemy's AI so that they play badly

[DaBo81]

I have a clear plan in mind as to how I'll develop my fleet over the course of the game:
early fleet is some scouts to survey the map on auto explore, plus a mothership and some disciples and I'll leave some spare capacity to get a colony ship if I see neutral extractors nearby and/or heralds if there are minor factions near.
I'll try to protect the disciples and withdraw them from matchups where they'll get shot up.
Once I get close to fleet limit I'll expand to a Halcyon, plus corvettes, plus drone hosts, with some spare capacity for scouts and constructors - I'll also scuttle my colony ship if it's grabbed all the extractors. I'll try to protect this fleet and use it defensively rather than expanding too fast - the AI has far more resources so it can afford to be wasteful. I support the fleet with repair bays and turrets, and possibly a basic starbase or two.
From there, I'll get the economy built up get the Coronata titan and find opportunities to farm xp to get it levelled up - I'll develop the starbases that are seeing lots of conflict and support them with the fleet. Mass disorientation is an excellent upgrade for starbases, plus the first weapons upgrade - if you support this starbase with your own fleet, you can cause huge damage to their fleets. It only requires 4 military labs to access this too.
From here, I'll develop the fleet by adding in more capital ships, carriers, disciples (with antimatter upgrade), and corvettes - though I start to move away from corvettes at this stage as their power drops off - I'll also get a small number of Solanus and Dominas, which I'll be careful with, as they're expensive and squishy. The real hitting power is the capital ships and the titan. I'll add to the original Progenitor, Halcyon, and Coronata, with at least 3 Discords, a Rapture, a Radiance, and perhaps an extra Halcyon and Progenitor - by this point I'll have possession on the mothership and mass transcendence and this force will be able to win the game for me. I keep building disciples as they're destroyed because they work really well with high level Discords and the Coronata - I won't just throw them away but, if needed, a Discord can prime them as psi-bombs. Otherwise, they keep the capital ships antimatter topped up and allow the Coronata to fire powerful shots through unity mass. If a capital ship gets destroyed, the mothership's possession skill will restore the replacement's level back up to where it was.
It takes a while to get to such a late game fleet but when it's built that's basically GG. In addition to this there's the deliverance engine which wins games.
I basically tech up, and econ up as Advent Loyalists have a strong late game advantage.

[DaBo81]

Zabiks guides are here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1768819566

and here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1776116762

[Muton]

I prefer Advent rebels and mass use of bombers

How are your starbases leveled up? I never used Mass disorientation. I use 3 defense, 2 offense, 2 meteor, 1 devotion

[DaBo81]

Yeah the rebels are very good too - they probably have the better titan with the Eradica. As for mass bomber spam, I haven't actually tried it - I don't know if the AI adapts and deploys counters to it. I like drone hosts but I also consider them to be expensive and in the early game I prefer corvettes as you can get about 7 corvettes for the price of a drone host. Halcyons are excellent capital ships but Advent's other capital ships are also really good; the only one I'm not that keen on is the Revelation.
With starbases, I only fully develop them if they're in key choke points. If the starbase is by a star or gas giant, I'll add 2 fighter bays, 2 armour, trade docks, the first weapon upgrade, plus 2 mass disorientate or mass disorientate and meteor. If it's an owned planet that's seeing a lot of fighting, I'll replace fighter bays with enduring devotion and support the starbase with tactical structures. If it's a wealthy econ planet that's not seeing lots of fighting, then maybe induced reverence, enduring devotion (if facing novaliths) trade docks.

The reason I really like mass disorientation is because it has a long range and a large area of effect and a long duration - it also affects titans. It allows for traps against the AI where you move your fleet out of a grav well but leave a high level starbase with disorientate. The AI will send a large fleet to attack the isolated starbase but get disabled by disorientate. If you then send in your fleet to assist, you'll destroy lots of ships before they can withdraw. Of course you can also give the starbase meteors too to make this even better.
I actually prefer disorientate to meteor because it works on everything except strike craft and corvettes - most disorientated ships can't fire, titans can but they spin around and it messes up their firing arcs.