How should I prepare for war?

[Wyttie]

I always lose whenever going to war with a neighbor early in the game. Does anyone have any tips for how I should properly prepare for war?

Here's my usual strategy:

• Design a ship (usually a missile boat)
  
• Build about 15-20 of them
  
• Put them all along my border with the empire I'm about to declare war on
  
• Make some claims on their territory and declare war
  
• Send the ships into their territory and they all get destroyed by the enemy, who always has more power than I do.

[Prometheus]

A few things. Be wary of space ports in early game fights. They are meant to be a huge advantage to defenders and early game they very much are. Only take an upgraded spaceport if you are confident they won't engage with their fleet.

Note that every upgraded spaceport can perform repairs. Once you capture an upgraded spaceport it becomes something of a forward base. As soon as it starts to recover health after you've taken it then you can repair. Repair often. Its easy to forget that ships with hull damage have a penalty to their fire rate. So not repairing while the enemy keeps coming at you can lead to horrible losses even if you win the initial fights.

Finally, the number of ships you are quoting would only work on the easiest difficulty settings. Make more ships.

[Wyttie]

Originally posted by Promethian:

A few things. Be wary of space ports in early game fights. They are meant to be a huge advantage to defenders and early game they very much are. Only take an upgraded spaceport if you are confident they won't engage with their fleet.

Note that every upgraded spaceport can perform repairs. Once you capture an upgraded spaceport it becomes something of a forward base. As soon as it starts to recover health after you've taken it then you can repair. Repair often. Its easy to forget that ships with hull damage have a penalty to their fire rate. So not repairing while the enemy keeps coming at you can lead to horrible losses even if you win the initial fights.

Finally, the number of ships you are quoting would only work on the easiest difficulty settings. Make more ships.

How many ships would you recommend?

[TheFutonWarrior]

I always find it helpful when you can effectively bottle neck an enemy at a certain location in their territory, try and get one with a spaceport and just keep reinforcing and repairing during fights. I usually get aggressive only after i have destroyers and i don't use missles at all usually. the combos i like on my corvettes are 2 armor plates, 1 shield, and a mix of plasma, coil guns, and lasers. i usually have a mandatory of 20 corvettes starting off and about 10-12 destroyers, 6-7 cruisers and 4-5 battleships. That's usually what my main fleet is comprised of (once i get all the research done of course). attack at opportunites of when the enemy you dislike is at war and split their forces that way you don't take as many casualties find another nation near them with common interest in killing off the AI or person you want gone.

[Prometheus]

Originally posted by Wyttie:

Originally posted by Promethian:

A few things. Be wary of space ports in early game fights. They are meant to be a huge advantage to defenders and early game they very much are. Only take an upgraded spaceport if you are confident they won't engage with their fleet.

Note that every upgraded spaceport can perform repairs. Once you capture an upgraded spaceport it becomes something of a forward base. As soon as it starts to recover health after you've taken it then you can repair. Repair often. Its easy to forget that ships with hull damage have a penalty to their fire rate. So not repairing while the enemy keeps coming at you can lead to horrible losses even if you win the initial fights.

Finally, the number of ships you are quoting would only work on the easiest difficulty settings. Make more ships.

How many ships would you recommend?

The correct number of ships at all times is the maximum amount your economy can support.

[MadMek]

Build ships until you can't build any more without going broke.

[Cryten]

Its usually better to wait until you get tier 2 or 3 weapons tech before going on the offensive as a empire. On anything but the easy settings the ai's will have advantages given to them that make them very strong in the early game. its better to fortify a outpost with your fleet and let any aggression wreck themselves on you.

Also personally I recommend avoiding missiles simply because they take too long to damage your enemy. Even if you firepower is overwhelming you will take several rounds of fire before your missiles start going to work. This puts you at a disadvantage. Even more of a disadvantage if you have an enemy with any flak.

There is an early game tech that adds +30 to your fleet cap and you can build star bases with anchorages to increase the cap further. I would not attack until you at least have the tech and even better 1-2 anchorage bases.

[Prometheus]

Ack. I almost forgot to comment on missiles. Don't use them. AI empires design their ships based on their personality. The most common AI personality (over half) builds PD on their CVs. So over half of all AI empires hard counter you if you go missile.

[coolman552]

you gotta always defend early game and dont attack anyone unless they are inferior or below

[SievertChaser]

Originally posted by Promethian:

Ack. I almost forgot to comment on missiles. Don't use them. AI empires design their ships based on their personality. The most common AI personality (over half) builds PD on their CVs. So over half of all AI empires hard counter you if you go missile.

The problem is that all carrier modules but one have PD slots, so why wouldn't you put antimissile weapons on those?

[GeneralVeers]

Originally posted by Wyttie:

I always lose whenever going to war with a neighbor early in the game.

Nobody can really answer that unless they know how you're losing.

Does the enemy fleet have more ships? Better technology? BOTH? Are you attacking into a starbase? Do the enemy ships have defenses that counter your weapons? Weapons that counter your defenses? There's lots of ways to lose a battle.

[Meewec]

Originally posted by Wyttie:

How many ships would you recommend?

on either the contacts screen or the diplomacy screen for a specific empire there's a power comparison that you can hover over. look at what the top one says to get a general idea on their military strength compared to you.

i think it's: pathetic you have something like three times their power, inferior you have around double, equivalent is a range between inferior and superior, superior they have double you and overwhelming they have triple you do

[Bakinda]

I also heard the enemy AI will always at least keep up with or surpass your fleet power level. It's programmed for them to. Because of this, I find it's always best to keep your fleet relatively small until right before you attack, and then spam a bunch of ships and blitzkrieg them.

Not sure if that's still accurate, it was a year or two ago.

[Markus Reese]

My first recommendation is when starting, set it to scaling difficulty. Difficulty gives a hard advantage to damage and tank for AI ships. When scaling is enabled, they do not start with any bonus, then get full bonus for difficulty by end game.

As for tactics, my defacto go to is I always try to get that second alloy going right away so I can get that strong, early fleet. Regardless on your ship design and rushing a fleet cap, it is that difficulty bonus will always imbalance it early because havent had time to get the tech/industry to offset.

[Nightmyre]

Originally posted by Bakinda:

I also heard the enemy AI will always at least keep up with or surpass your fleet power level. It's programmed for them to. Because of this, I find it's always best to keep your fleet relatively small until right before you attack, and then spam a bunch of ships and blitzkrieg them.

Not sure if that's still accurate, it was a year or two ago.

I doubt that's true. AI fleet strength tends to scale pretty linearly with their overall resources.

For the OP - as Meewec mentioned, take a look at your relative fleet strength to theirs. If it's below neutral, you should probably avoid declaring war, unless you've got some aces up your sleeve (hiring marauder fleets for example).

If your objective is to declare war to grab territory, you can still succeed despite weaker fleets by taking advantage of starbases, since I'm fairly certain those don't factor into fleet strength. Just be aware that, at least early game, the AI will just skip past your starbases if it can.

[Ninjamestari]

Sounds like your strategy kinda sucks xD
The number of ships depends on what your enemy has. Build a bigger fleet than your enemy has, I'm pretty sure that by now you've figured out that your "build an x amount of ships and that'll suffice" - strategy isn't worth ♥♥♥♥.