Newbie help-how not to get crushed early on?

[Panfilo]

I got the game recently but have had a persistent problem where an aggressive neighbor closes off their border, chokes me off from resources, and inevitably declares war with far more forces than I could hope to defend against. This seems to happen 4 out of 5 games, with the fifth one having me get crushed later by a fallen empire.

I've been playing the Jehemet fungus guys which are supposed to be pacifist but even when I'm proactive about trying to build up my fleets this still often happens. It's quite frustrating and I often get little warning it's going to happen like when you recently contact another race and they quickly declare war soon after.

Building a fleet to deter such aggression has been challenging because I'm mostly using my alloys to expand. It feels like I don't have any real agency diplomatically either, like I'm at the whims of whatever the other faction decides to do.

I'm playing stock game, no mods or dlcs at this point.

[EnemigoDeLaMafia]

What difficulty are you on? I'm also playing vanilla on Comodore.

Try to get and fortify a good chokepoint so that if they want to attack, they'll have to go through there. One of these with the stellar bastion upgrade, a few defense platforms and your fleet should be enough to stop them from attacking. Even if they attack they'll probably lose.

But you are going to need alloys one way or another. So maybe looking at your industry is also important.

Get a couple worlds with the forge world designation and plenty of industrial districts, and to feed this production you'll also need minerals so get some worlds producing that too.

You shouldn't be running out of alloys just by expanding.

There is also a building that will give you 2 metalurgist jobs (I play the game on another language so I miss the actual name of things sometimes) and eventually it can be upgraded to increase job output, and total jobs on the forge worlds. But this building you can put everywhere just to give you that extra margin you need in the early game.

I haven't seen the AI build more than maybe 3000 power fleets in the early game, and once destroyed they don't seem to be able to rebuild them either.

So anywhere from 20 or maybe 40 Corvettes + the upgrades in the chokepoint should be enough (speaking of early game). Personally I'd do 20 and then just stockpile alloys and build more if I suspect of an attack.

[Panfilo]

I'm only playing on Ensign. Granted I'm still getting used to the game, so I suck now but I'm sure I'll get better over time.

How much of a fleet should I build up to deter opportunists from attacking in the first place? Its all challenging to juggle, to build fleets you need alloys, which need minerals, which are also getting used for other things. And as you build more spaceships you need more anchorages to support them.

Often when I got attacked it wasn't a nice neat little choke point they had to funnel through, there were 3 or 4 ways they could get in and I just can't keep up on defenses along with everything else I'm trying to do at the time.

[Råb!d]

What are the difficulty settings?

##I usually try to explore around me so I know all the choke points and then build toward them. It doesn't always work out, especially if you open your borders to a neighbor.
##Be sure to check your policies and adjust them as needed, especially when the factions form (factions might be from a dlc).
##It was recommended to me that I use corvettes, but as soon as I have researched to cruisers that I build those. It was good advice. Skip building the Destroyers.
##Make modifications in Ship Designer, since the ai doesn't always fill the slots, or fill them with the best thing.
##Don'T forget to use Ship Designer for your Defensive Platforms as well.
##Use diplomats to Improve Relations with your immediate neighbors. Form agreements with them.
##If a neighbor might cause trouble be sure to build a Station and arm it well. Probably would want to have a fleet nearby too. It is probably good to have a station that specializes in shipbuilding nearby or at each of the choke points.
##You can fight defensively by using long range weapons on your ships and Defense Platforms. With all the station mods you can make your fleet and platforms hard to win against.
##Cruisers and above, as well as Defense Platforms allow building Hangars (for small craft) which can devastate enemies from far away too. They could be good for attacking too.

[Bloodartist]

Explore aggressively in the beginning, and try to claim chokepoint systems. When you are expanding your empire, a key element is influence. To improve your influence, make sure your factions are happy, and that you don't make too many treaties (which cost certain amount of influence to maintain).

Spacestations and their artillery and defense platforms are nigh-useless for defense (Id say their main use is to suppress piracy), make sure you have a suitable fleet to fight wars.

Design your own ships, and make sure you enable the "auto-upgrade". Once you get battleships, you can safely ignore any shiptypes smaller than them. Battleships are the ultimate weapon.

For handling an empire: try to make sure that your empire sprawl stays smaller than your administrative capacity. This is one of the biggest and sneakiest pitfalls for a beginner Id say. If sprawl gets too big, EVERYTHING in your empire ends up being more expensive, and it really cripples your empire. It also cripples your research.

Simple solution to admin capacity is to build an admin building on each of your planets, maybe more than one depending on your empire.

If you have a threatening neighbour who seems like they might wage war on you, put an envoy on them to improve relations. With some luck they might manage to keep the relations at a standstill, preventing them from declaring war on you.

[GeneralVeers]

Originally posted by Panfilo:

Building a fleet to deter such aggression has been challenging because I'm mostly using my alloys to expand.

Then maybe you need to do less expanding in order to get that fleet bigger.

This trade-off dilemma exists in pretty much every strategy game. At some point, you need to get your military up to snuff, and the INSTANT you start working on that, you lose opportunities to build that economy. There's just nothing to be done about this.

[galadon3]

Set you economy-policy to "militarized" lowers the production of consumer goods and ups the production of alloys, and set your trade-policy to "consumer benefits" that way trade gets changed into energy and consumer products (not just energy) to balance that out.
The boost in alloys should help at least somewhat early on.

[Journeyman Prime]

Unfortunately, you need to do three things which may not come naturally to you yet:

1. Survey and expand towards theoretical choke points first, taking only mineral/energy-rich systems outside of the systems you need to take to snake towards those chokes
2. Have your first fleet finish building around the time of first communication (not first contact, there's a difference) and have the alloys/naval cap left over to build your second fleet right away
3. To accomplish 2 you will need to have focused mainly on alloys for most of the first decade or two of the game. This sadly means your society and pop happiness will have to take a backseat. In addition you will need to build at least 2 anchorages during that time.

If you do all of these things, and build a military starbase in the choke from 1 and park your fleets there, you will rarely lose a war in the early game, just lose some ships. I have yet to see the AI fight their way (maybe sneak but thats a bad choke then) past 2 fleets of 20 corvs and a military starbase.

Your main advantage with pacifists is how much less admin cap your pops require and your stability bonuses. Use both of these to your advantage by letting pop happiness and amenities drop some and replace your government offices with an alloy building to boot. This will slow down your research and traditions, but hey that isn't winning you early game wars now is it?

When you colonize a new planet, if you have the mineral income, build a forge building on it to further increase your alloy income. All of these things are temporary until your tech and population size makes it easier to maintain national security without needing all of these extra measures.

Early game, starbases are your best friend right below fleets. Not necessarily platforms, although those can help tremendously at this level as well. Find a choke where its hard for the AI to sneak past your starbase, build a fortress, and park your fleets there.

Once you have and can easily support three or four size 20 fleets and have built up enough of an alloy stockpile (even if you had to purchase some of it off the market) to rebuild at least 1 fleet, stop focusing on alloys and military and shift your economy towards more civilian matters: consumer goods, amenities, government, research etc.

It goes without saying that during the militarization phase you need to keep your consumer goods and food above 0 and keep planetary stability above 45%. Other than that, everything else should be devoted to military production, whether that's alloys or naval cap (through soldiers and anchorages). Good luck, and try not to mess it up.