Tips for going to war?

[NeatoKing]

Whenever I play this game, the playthough always plateaus when I go to war with another faction. I make a ♥♥♥♥ ton of ships because I need them to compete with enemy ships but that cuts heavily into my empire's dust. Also My ground troops seem to lose fights more often than not. If anyone has any tips on how to smooth these problems out it would be greatly appreciated.

[Selegun]

Most advice will lean into the strategy of the specific factions but there are a few things that hold true between all of them.

To start off, if you have not invested at all in Trade then get on that ASAP. Trade will keep your dust going and spike it as you acquire more trade companies and allies to trade with. If dust is your choke point this will usually be the cause.

For war explicitly, get a feel for what your faction is good at. Some factions will be better at holding your own systems while others will want to plunge into the heart of another empire and cause some chaos. Find the battles you can comfortably win and lean into them as best you can.

If you are getting slapped around in land battles look into equipping modules that offer damage while blockading or extra manpower deployment. Rather than jumping into system and fighting everyone and their dog set up a blockade and sit around for a few turns. This will chip away at the defenders steadily while keeping your own army safe until they are ready to land.

Lastly, don't be afraid to give the opponent a firm slap in the face and just wait things out. Winning a battle or two pushes war momentum slowly into your favor. This is super important when you want to keep aggression low for other conflicts and after some time allows you to demand peace/truce by making the other empire pay you a decent sum of dust to maintain nonaggression. This is also the primary method of making friends/allies as the game goes on. Carrot and stick, if you will. Once you get the hang of this it will open up further trade partners and allow you to gain massive sums of dust while also being able to focus on those other pesky wars that another faction just cannot help but push upon you.

[Ericus1]

First, towards ground combat, make sure you are changing your army compositions and upgrading them. It's something as a new player that is very easy to miss that it exists entirely. Ground warfare in the game works like a rock/paper/scissors game where armor beats infantry, planes beats armor, and infantry beats planes. At first you can only have infantry, but armor unlocks fairly early, then planes unlock later.

So it makes sense to have all or mostly armor armies much of the game until planes unlock, then you want a mix of all 3. On top of that, there are 4 "levels" of upgrades you can apply to each class of unit (costing increased tiers of resources, i.e. tier one costs dust, tier 2 costs dust, hyperium, and titanium, etc.) so make sure to purchase those upgrades for the classes.

Second, it's generally worthwhile to siege first to reduce planet defensive manpower rather than just invading turn one. To make that proceed at anything more than a snails pace, make sure you have ships (either a dedicated class or on your support ships) with the upgrade that increases bombardment damage. Makes a huge difference. The AI loves to use the "draft population" tactic, often to the point of drafting the entire population of the system (something I think is abjectly stupid and should be limited to have rapidly diminishing returns or come with huge combat penalties, but it is what it is) so it's often nice to wait until the planet is sieged down to zero so you can insta-blitz it in one turn and take it with most of the population and improvements intact. It also avoids you running out of manpower mid-fight because of the AI throwing bodies at you. To not have that take stupidly long amounts of time having the bombardment modules is very handy.

As for ship upkeep costs, it is what it is. Look for laws that can reduce it, give your fleet a hero than can reduce costs, or make more dust, not much else you can do about that.

[Fulano]

Originally posted by NeatoKing:

Whenever I play this game, the playthough always plateaus when I go to war with another faction. I make a ♥♥♥♥ ton of ships because I need them to compete with enemy ships but that cuts heavily into my empire's dust. Also My ground troops seem to lose fights more often than not. If anyone has any tips on how to smooth these problems out it would be greatly appreciated.

Are you designing your ships to counter the AI's ships?

Try to start the battle at ranges that are bad for their weapons, and focus on resisting the weapon types they are using.

For example, if they are using lots of missiles, use the short range kinetic weapons that can shoot down missiles and start at short range in combat so their weapons are less effective. Then put more armor than shields on your ships and you should have no trouble defeating them.

With troops, make sure you bring "transport" ships that have those troop modules on them. After you destroy their planet defenses, just use the blitz skill and you'll almost always win.

[Sloan]

Accumulate a large supply of Influence. In case of compulsion to a truce (cessation of fire). Fight in an alliance? It's hard to say sometimes this is a successful strategy. You will have to change the designs of your Hunters and Coordinators, the AI will adapt to your weapons.

[Vzzdak]

Customize your fleet ship composition according to your intended tactics card, then drag-drop the specific ships into the flotilla that they would perform best. (Short-, medium-, long-range).

Easy to overlook that you can unlock the flotilla groups, and then drag-drop in the battle setup.