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In my games during the early game, it seems the AI mostly just shoots railguns at me, which are unguided and certainly don't one-shot my cities if one is lucky enough to hit a city. I've won FFA skirmishes vs. multiple Insane AI and the only extra challenge seemed to be that they are insanely accurate at looping railgun missiles around the sun multiple times to finally hit my planet (where it may just land in the ocean somewhere because it's a railgun, not a guided missile).
So maybe some of these tips will help?
- Build nothing but mines and the occasional power plant for the first few turns to get a strong economy going. The enemy AI will probably get the first shot off at you, but who cares? They're just railguns and are unlikely to hit anything before you've covered most of the planet with buildings anyway. And if they do happen to damage a few buildings, you'll have enough materials to repair everything and still have leftover materials for expansion. (But don't be wasteful by repairing buildings that are only slightly damaged.)
- As you can afford it, build a power plant tapped off each of your cities to start them growing. This may be why your cities are getting destroyed easily - they need more population to absorb the occasional lucky hit.
- Don't bother building any defenses. Instead build your buildings as far apart from each other as possible so that fewer can be hit at a time. IMO the automatic defenses are underpowered and thus a waste of resources to build, energy that you could use to shoot, and space where a better building could go. (Defense buildings consume energy to shoot, and if you haven't saved any energy for that, they do nothing. If you have saved energy for that, they'll shoot down one and only one enemy missile. Not worth it.)
- Don't bother with railguns, they suck. Research missiles ASAP, then go for the economic (mine/power) and counter intel research. Once you have missiles researched, try to build at least one new missile each turn. It's good to spread missiles around the planet as best you can so you'll always have missiles that can shoot where you want to shoot. The poles are great spots for missiles. :)
- When the mining or power plant researches are complete, it's very much worth it to spend the entire turn's worth of resources upgrading every mine or power plant you can, even if it means you don't shoot for that turn. (The building properties screen has convenient arrow buttons to navigate to the next/previous building of the same type, so you don't have to click each building individually to upgrade.)
- Keep enough intel to be able to see the enemy's power plants, and look for opportunities to shut down several of the enemy's buildings at once (especially mines and weapons) by destroying just one or two power plants with missiles. Two missiles are enough to take out any power building that doesn't have the HP upgrade. If there's a defense building nearby, send three missiles at it. The first may get shot down, but the other two will almost certainly take it out.
- For your turn, try doing things in this order: 1. Repair or rebuild any damaged/destroyed buildings. 2. Shoot missiles. 3. Use any leftover energy to build/expand. If you have no leftover energy, then next turn build a new power plant before shooting missiles.
- Keep the pressure up by destroying power plants that will hurt their economy and remove their ability to shoot at you. Once you can do that and still have missiles left that can shoot, start taking out their cities.
Most of what I said above is still applicable and should still be the goal, but it's easier said than done:
- The very first research I did was Nuclear Power Plants because I prefer having more connections for expansion. Once it was completed, I built one new Nuke and sold my beginning Solar Plant to replace it with another Nuke.
- The next research I did was to unlock Missiles. Along the way it unlocks Satellites, but I kept building mines until Missiles were unlocked. Then I build a couple Missiles, only to realize that I had no Intel therefore nothing to shoot at lol. So if I were to play again, I'd build some Satellites before any Missiles. At least enough Satellites to see the enemy's mines, but eventually you need to see and knock out their power because that takes out both mines and missiles at once.
- I didn't burn an entire turn's worth of resources upgrading my mines once the research completed. I only upgraded about half of them during that turn because I needed some more intel too. I upgraded the rest of the mines over time as I could, but needed to interleave that with building more satellites, power plants, missiles, etc.
- I actually didn't build a single Data Center for counter-intel, nor did I upgrade any Satellites with counter-intel (but I did get their increased intel upgrade). Instead of counter-intel, I kept up my own Intel vs them and kept destroying their ability to use their intel against me, thereby eliminating any need for me to have counter-intel at all.
- Besides Railguns, the enemy AI did build a few Coilcannons. I prioritized taking them out (by destruction or removing their power) above all else.
- About the time you're ready to start shooting, is also the time you'll want power plant upgrades so you'll have plenty of energy to do the shooting.
- Once you have enough Intel to see their mines, but not yet enough Intel to see their power plants, take note of the names of their mines. You'll see Mine 1, Mine 2, Mine 3, etc. Take out Mine 1 and it'll most likely cut power from Mine 2 and Mine 3(+).
- Whenever my buildings got damaged, I would always click the "< 50%" auto repair button if it appeared, but NEVER the "< 80%" one because it's too expensive. After doing the < 50% auto-repair, I would then repeatedly click the Damaged Building's report button on the lower right, which cycles the camera through each area where an enemy missiles hit, and visually check the buildings' health bars. If they were close to half destroyed, I would repair them individually (sometimes they're barely above 50% health so that auto < 50% won't repair those).
Hope that helps!
If you're finding it difficult to get intel on the AI before they have tons of counter intel, be sure you're not spending valuable turns researching stuff that isn't very helpful (yet). Beeline to the important research ASAP: Nuke power plants, telescopes, missiles, econ upgrades.
And if you're finding it difficult to afford that many telescopes, be sure you're focusing on building a strong economy in the first few turns. Tons of mines and plenty of power plants.
Hope that helps!
For aiming at planets, don't try to lead it like a sniper shot. Instead, aim well off to the side and make the trajectory curve match exactly with the planet's orbit line at the point of impact. Ideally it will be a nice round curve that merges with the planet's orbit, at the very top of the curve and at the point where the planet will be. This way you're working with gravity instead of against it. From there, the only tricky part should be aiming at the right spot based on how far the planet will move before the missile arrives. And of course, having a clear path free of other planets to mess things up.
Another thing that can help - but only for missiles - is the researchable upgrade to increase their lock-on distance. But even still, on bigger maps with 4+ players it can be tough to land shots from directly across the solar system, so don't be discouraged by those. It should be doable on the 1v1 maps though.