New Masochistic Strategies?

tell me about it...masochistic is finally living up to it's name. i think this is a good thing.

i have yet to figure out any kind of coherent strategy.

cheers

h

Like yourself, Jutinian, I am discovering that my previous strategies on Painful are no longer effective for Maschistic (which I just moved up to) under 1.03.

The Arceans especially are now a tremendous threat at "Genius" or above.

I am shifting my starting picks to War Party, Speed +1 & HP+50 just to prevent the AI "tribute-demanding" you describe.

Congrats to Brad and crew for a very challenging improvement to the AI!

~SDC~

I guess all of us know that the key to survival is getting past the expansion stage into a point where your military is decent enough to deter the AI.

Unless you are hidden in deep space and with the AI bonuses at Maso, it is evitable that threats will come rolling in.

What I have tried successfully once to survive this stage is really just to give in to the threats (except those asking for systems). I know others have warned against it but it does buy you time to build up your strength. Yes, if you don't build up, you're screwed as they will continually threaten you.

A word of caution that this works only up to a point in time. In my last game, the Dregs were simply running away with the game at about 3-4 times my spending. Once they were tired of threatening, they simply declared war and invaded.

My current picks are:

War Party
+30% Economics
+40% Repair
+10% Morale
+10% Population Growth

Masochist is tough, but you can survive if you take leases on critical trade goods, wonders, and ships. This will be a heavy drain on your economy for a long time to come, but I see it as the only realistic method to get past the early expansion phase with enough juice to finish the race down the road.

Trade will become a crucial supplement to your income, so you have to try and get a head start on it. Forget about receiving tribute for anything through diplomacy; it's just not going to happen. My strategy right now is to go light on research once I obtain Trade and Basic Environment Control and use trade goods as my bargaining chips. I'll rush for or purchase Aphrodisiacs and use that to obtain Impulse Drives, Nano-Metal Composition, and Controlled Gravity from the major races. The later two of these techs enable more trade goods, so I'll rush for Frictionless Clothing, Tri-Strontium Steel, and Gravity Accelerators again, then use them to trade for more techs. It's a painful decision to part with these powerful trade goods, so I try to give them to a weak AI that has little chance of threatening me later in the game. Any techs I can spare will be traded to the minor civs as soon as possible, and preferably for Shields that grants access to Battle Axes.

The acquisition of impulse drives allows me to perform an early transport rush, so I'm always on the look out for such an opportunity. Ideally, I want to make this rush in a star cluster that is far from an AI's home system so their military units cannot reach the front lines before I have grabbed a few systems and maybe some techs. If I have a local military advantage with Battle Axes, I might make a gamble and farm their planets for techs and social improvements by letting them expand a bit. After I clear out the local star cluster, I'll sue for peace with trade goods and send in the freighters to repair diplomatic relationships.

At this point, I'll pump up military spending and quickly colonize all the habitable planets within my reach. That will be followed up with a burst of social spending to get some infrastructure in place. If Earth did not start out with PQ 20, I will try to find a PQ 20+ planet to act as my new capital. The major civs will probably have Battleships by now and are already researching Dreadnoughts. This is a critical point in the game as I am so far behind in tech it is impossible for me to catch up even if I poured all my income into research. Instead, I will use my trade goods to obtain the immediate prerequisite techs for Battleship and Dreadnought technology and move on from there. The fact that the AIs trade extensively between themselves is something to take advantage of, since you can be assured that even the weakest races will probably have all the techs in game.

As soon as the Dreadnoughts and Anti-Matter Missiles start rolling off the production line, it’s time to grab some resources and work on infrastructure. My research spending remains at minimal levels until I have secured all my resources and built all the critical sub 200 cost social improvements. If I can survive until a couple Dreadnoughts are available, the game gets easier from then on. This is when the war party hit point bonus and +40% repair ability really start to shine, especially since the AIs are no longer stuck with the war party themselves.

To summarize that all:

Forget about research, rush for trade goods and swap them for techs instead. Wage war and grab planets early if you can. Try to maintain good relationships with the AIs by establishing trade routes, and keep yourself in the race for Dreadnoughts with smart tech trading.

I should add that you still have to research, but you should try to avoid any tech that the AI will go for as well. Some familiarity with the AI research paths will be very helpful here.

Rather than giving into demands I usually just give away the occasional techs to all races EXCEPT the most powerful. I assume that eventually I'll be at war with them so I sweeten up the other races and hope they will join me when war occurs. So long as you can keep the AI races fairly balanced (occasionally bribing them to war on each other) and survive the early stages (not necessarily an easy task), then you stand a fair chance of winning. Loose the balance though and by the time you're ready to compete one of the AI races could be just too far ahead and all you can do is focus on a research victory and hope to get it before the AI crushes (giving away the occasional system for the required techs is a bit of a cheat but can be done).

Paul.

~SDC~

I think the system gifting is too much into the exploit area as well, and that's why I go with trade goods. You're almost guaranteed to get anything you want, including a war declaration if you are willing to part with a trade good. Since the AI already gets huge bonuses on masochist level, I just convince myself that the Aphrodisiacs and morale boosters aren't really benefiting them that much

I've tried using technology as bargaining chips, but it just didn't turn out very well for me. Concentrating on getting any advantage over the AI in terms of research just stunted my early expansion too much. For the price of Aphrodisiacs, Harmony Crystals, and perhaps a couple other trade goods in exchange for owning 50+ systems before I move into the Dreadnought stage is a fair deal I think.

I'm really torn between discussing our favourite strategies and then finding it possibly nerfed in the next update but well that's the way to keep the challenge fresh...

Agree with Za H that trading trade goods is the way to go. Rushing TGs such as Diplo Trans and Grav Accelerators only cost 439 bc and 10 bc/turn but you could exchange each TG with every single major and minor race for up to 5-6 techs. Great deal if you ask me. You can literally minimise researching to techs which they don't seem to research (like sensors if you like Eyes) and ship tech which is very expensive and focus on expanding.

Those trade goods also come in handy when you need the whole galaxy to attack the race who is running away with the game (like the Dregs in my last game, who were strong at the expense of the Altarians who only managed to colonise 3 systems).

For what it's worth, in my current game I have a minor civ sort of isolated away from the enemy civs. I've actually managed to get some tribute out of them. The key seems to be that they aren't trading with any other civs, and so aren't entering into long-term tribute situations with anyone but me.

My current strategy for Gigantic/Masochistic revolves around trying to isolate at least one minor civ and (with luck) one of the major civs such that they become, in effect, vassals that I use to tech farm.

Thanks to you guys for the strategy tips. I submitted my first Masochistic/Gigantic win under 1.3x a few minutes ago. Man it's a lot harder with 1.3x than 1.2x!

But I think I've got the hang of it. Once I have 4-6 trade goods that the computer players don't have I can really make things happen. I was surprised at how much fight the computer had even in the end game, though. Under 1.2, by the time I got Overlord tech I could smash the computer player without even going on a war footing. This time around the Drengin declared war while I was researching the 3rd-to-last tech for a Tech Victory and they were slamming me with Overlords than were almost as good as my best ships.

My Antimatter Missle Swarms took care of that, but it was interesting for a while.

Good job with the win. It is one heck of a ride at that setting especially with the new game balances.

Noticed you are still empire-less. Wanna join Imperium Galactica and other like-minded players with Masochistic streaks?

Better join Apolyton. Maybe we don't have that good players, but then our Civ3/MOO3/SMAC players join our GalCiv empire things will change!

~SDC~

Bump. Updated views anyone?
(I've gone back to win as Masochistic at each galaxy size... fun seeing the different tactics necessary.)

Skipping research and obtaining them with rushed trade goods is still the way to go. I've had some success with speed and range picks instead of economics and repair though. You can probably live with a Federalist party given enough AMMs too.

I just posted my second masochistic game. I tried this on a hunch and it seems to have worked both times.

I found I could win the game with minimal military. In this last game for example, the first ship I built was an overlord.

I just didn't build many military ships (except constructors). The only time I'd build them was when there was an enemy transport near my planets. Just rush buy to intercept the transport.

The AI kept making demands from me of course, but I just kept accepting them. Even when they asked for planets. The thing is I built starbases maxed out on culture in all my systems, that way whenever I gave a system to the AI I'd usually get it back fairly quickly through culture. Note: Don't build cultural resistance improvements. Of course I gave the AI tons of money, but the economic gain I got from not focusing on military outweighed my losses.

I took over the AI's systems by building starbases and eventually, when I was big enough they actually stopped making demands even though I had no military.

Diplomatically though, I traded techs and trade goods in order to keep the AIs at war with each other. Apparently when the AI is at war with 5 other civs they're less eager to go to war with you. And if you're the only civ they're at peace with they send ALL their traderoutes to you.

Research-wise I didn't care about getting rangers, overlords, etc. that quickly. What the AI will usually do is it'll rush for these technologies as soon as it can and it'll spend a lot of time on them. I however will research other techs first and then use them to trade. Military techs I researched much later in the game when they only took like one turn.

When an AI actually declared war on me,if they were close enough to be a threat, I just built up my military to the point where I could offer them concessions for peace, and then I generally sold off my ships to avoid maintenance (since they'd be obscolete by the next war anyways).

This way I only went to war 4 times before I was "ready" and I managed to contain all 4 wars so that the enemy didn't take many of my systems (I lost maybe 10 systems total in the game), while during peace time I took over half the galaxy. Then eventually I discovered excaliburs (I was the first) and then I started building them like crazy for a conquest victory.

No Mods, no cheats..just the willingness to act like a total coward for most of the game . Worked in my last two games.

I used +70% pop. growth
30% influence
10% diplomacy
and federalists

P.S. By the time I started building excaliburs I controlled roughly half the galaxy, and the AI civs had spent 90% of the game at war with all other AI civs.


Sorry for the over long post

one more thing..

It's generally cheaper to ask the stronger civ to attack the weaker.

I have not been doing too bad in a medium maso game by using the +70 diplo pick and trade. Trade can get you out of war for most of the game, and with good diplo not only can you pit the ai against one another, I also got lots of proposed one-for-one tech exchanges initiated by the ai (like they gave me ranger for whatever-it-was). This approach requires you to be less agressive in the expansion phase (no +1 speed or range picks), but you will be able to prey upon the weaker civs when fights begin and collect worlds that way. Trade goods become useful to cause havoc between the ai's and to get one or two tech each time.
So bad I kept the War party from the previous game instead of something more useful...

Interesting read Markissimo41.

Now what to try next?

Markissimo41, very interesting. Thanks.

How reliant on Trade Goods leverage is that strategy? From what I'm reading over on the GC forum they may severely restrict the appeal of TGs the the AIs in an upcoming version.

~SDC~

TG spinning is nerfed in 1.04 Incredible.

Bralex reported that you could only get 1 or 2 techs for the more expensive but more powerful TGs.

Thanks, Snuis and DMF

As for the TG, my strategy wasn't that dependent on them. I didn't use the TGs to get techs, but to get the AIs to fight each other. And I only sold the morale and military TGs.

But actually I just played my last 3 games (2 maso, 1 crippling) with a new strategy that works even better. I don't know how it'll be affected by the new version, but I don't see anything in the updates that should affect it.

You see I was playing a game(on masochist) where I(evil) had about 10% of the galaxy, the Drengin(evil) had another 30% on the opposite side of the galaxy, while the Altarians and Torians (both good) had an alliance and held the remaining 60%. The Yor surrendered to the Torians earlier. Now the Altarians/Torians declared was on the Drengin and the Drengin started losing badly. The Drengin had a huge military but pretty soon it was COMPLETELY wiped out. I couldn't understand why their military disappeared so quickly so I did a little bit of espionage and found that both the Altarians and Torians had military abilities above 250% while the Drengin had very little. I was at peace with everyone, but I knew the Altarians/Torian alliance would turn on me as soon as they finished off the Drengin. Since I was playing by my old strategy I had no military to speak of, so I couldn't help that way. Instead what I did was I tried to locate the Altarian/Torian bases with military resources. Then I offered to buy them from them, and it worked..The AI is willing to sell its starbases even if they're sitting on resources. The cost was fairly high however (20-30,000 bcs). So after I realized I could do this, I sent out scouts to locate all the Altarian/Torian bases with resources, and over the next 50 turns or so I pretty much started buying them one by one. First I bought the economic bases which significantly boosted my economy (by about 300% or so) and damaged their economies noticably (actually the Torians went into some serious debt for a while). Then I bought out their influence bases, and I saw an immediate and drastic expansion in my borders. That alone gave me another 20 systems or so. Then I bought out the rest of their military bases and gave half of them to the Drengin. The Drengin were able to recover and I had a thriving economy and vast cultural superiority. By the time I finished buying out all their bases (except I didn't buy morale ones) I got nearly half the galaxy culturally without building any starbases in that period.

Of course during this period (of about 50-60 turns or so) I had to cut down my spending significantly (around 25% most of the time) to build up enough cash to buy the bases. But the next game I played I chose the diplo +70 pick and the starbases were a LOT cheaper (10-20,000 bcs). This time I started buying out the econ and influence bases right from the start as soon as I discovered them and I gotta say it was almost too easy. But they say that the maso AI is a lot tougher in the new version so we'll see if this still works.

Note: 1) Don't buy starbases in sectors where the AI has planets
2) The AI doesn't seem to care much for how developed a starbase is when deciding on a price
3) I don't think the morale bases are really worth it so I didn't buy them.

With this strategy Masochistic becase VERY beatable. As long as you can survive the initial "grab" and get enough planets at the start you should be able to beat the masochist AI by buying out their starbases.

P.S. The one drawback is that your starbases will be scattered around the galaxy (right next to AI controlled sectors) and they're not too well defended so if the AI does suddenly decide to go to war you can count on half your bases going up in smoke pretty quickly (happened in my last game). So I suggest sending out ships to each starbase to defend it as soon as you buy it.


~SDC~

If trading Trade Goods is nerfed then they're not really Trade Goods anymore.

Boy, Maso 1.04 got a heck of a lot tougher. In the game I just played now the AIs built 8 TGs/wonders in the first 30 turns. However it seems that they made the techs worth a lot more in trading..so now you can buy resource starbases with only 2 or 3 techs..I anticipate winning this game, but not without buying out the AIs starbases.



~SDC~

Oh well... New cheese. Devs need to alter SB cost depending on number of 15+ planets in galaxy.

~SDC~
[Message Edited]

I agree Ellestar..I wish I'd made my first post before 1.04 came out, that way maybe they could've done something about it. I just finished my first maso 1.04 win with buying out starbases, but I gotta tell you, I don't think I could've won without that, especially since the AI now starts off with something like 30% planet ability.



~SDC~