Lately I've gotten back into Sins after seeing it named PC game of the year on IGN. And I have encountered something that causes alot of trouble. Late in a game after you've set up a good economy and well defended choke points, what do you do when the AI gangs up on you?
For example:
I had started a game with TEC and the game was going very well i controlled about 10-12 planets and my economy was great lots of fleets,etc, etc. I was FFA and i was basically ignoring what ever missions the AI gave me since most of them weren't going to help me. I had established 3 planet choke points with a 3 bar fleet on each one with 3-4 hangers and 6-8 turrets on each one with Factories etc. Then just as i was about to set up another attack i get a 5 bar fleet from one of the neighboring AI: not that bad i just thought i would transfer one of my fleets there. Then 5 more fleets appear at that system! And i got decimated. I had enough factories to keep a constant stream of units there but it was never enough 1 economy vs. 6 = i get destroyed.
SO... here is my question. What do i do to handle this? Is there anyway i can prevent it, ectc? Or am do i just suck at this game. If this question has been asked before I'm sorry but the search function doesn't work very well and it wasn't on the first few pages.
erhmm, considering they ganged up on you, this statement is where it went wrong. if you pla faa this is what happens when you don't keep ppl happy.
or you can do as Siddy,and just get lots and lots of lvl 6 marzas and lol at the AI's dead fleets.
P.S
the 2'nd mini expansion will flesh out the diplomacy features, they are rather poor atm.
That's why when you wanna do a FFA you need to lock team in game option or else they will all go agaisnt you at the end wich suck.
I noticed that as long as you have one CPU ally they all fight eachother. But as soon as you lose that ally the CPUs team up and rape you.
I had two AIs who initially went all out to get me from the beginning. Since I ended up with a poor start compared to them, I tried to get on the good side of the AI nearest me. Eventually, I got a cease-fire, and kept up the "good relations". I then helped this AI bash the other one, but I sort of hung back and let it do most of the really heavy lifting. By that time, the AI was offering me a Peace Treaty (which I declined of course) but we had ship and planet vision etc. In the mean time, I started to rebuild my fleet and played catch up. When I saw the other AI was going to cave, I positioned my fleet in anticipation of the last remaining AI's fleet position. Then as they say, the rest is history. After the AI had won the large battle and killed off the second AI, I went in and chased/crushed it relentlessly and went planet bashing. The other AI never recovered. Felt good to come from behind and snatch victory from defeat
Is it possible to attain anything other than a military victory in Sins? I haven't played it in over six months, and I've just started to pick it up again.
If not, it seems sort of like cheating for a player to turn on a CPU ally. It makes sense for anyone to ally with anyone else to defeat other enemies, but once there are only two civs remaining, the result will inevitably be turning against each other. Does the CPU AI anticipate that, or does it assume peace will continue forever and ever?
Or is there a dual victory option?
It would be cool if there was a dual victory option! I think this should be something the devs look into . As it stands now, I do not believe there is a dual victory option.
You can win by just using cultural influence. I believe there is even an achievement in the game that you can only unlock by beating the game without researching anything on the military side of the tech tree.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought.
I'm fine with the fact that you (more or less) always have to kill everyone else to win, but if so, I think the AI should realize this as well, and be prepared to go to war once it's the only CPU player remaining aside from the player.
Well, if you have locked teams, then when all the oponents on the other team(s) have been wiped out, your entire team wins, regardless of who did the actual wiping out. So I guess that might count as a "kind of" dual victory?
If you are playing FFA, and you allied with an AI, and all the other players have been eliminated, the AI immediately breaks all peace treaty/cease fire/trade agreements/etc and declares war on you. "I need my own space" is what they tell you (or something like that)..
Ahhh, good to hear. I've never been in that situation before (at least, not yet since I picked the game up again), so I wasn't sure. That makes a lot of sense.
Personally, for most games, I'd really rather just have one Advent, one TEC, and one Vasari team, all locked. It may restrict diplomacy options, but in the end, they're all against each other anyway so it makes the most sense to me from a metagame perspective.
I have won games with an AI ally without locked teams. I cant win with two, but one is definately possible.
Ok here is an update:
Yesterday i restarted from one of my previous saves and tried 1 of 2 things.
1. I tried doing the missions and found out that i absoulitly hate them! Almost all the missions that AI gave me were to attack planets in diffrent star systems places where i don't know how strong the oppistion is and where they are. or something a little more resaonable attack other factions but even that was difficult to do; having the most planets under my control i controlled the most terrotory but that made it harder to defend and when ever i took a sizeable force out to attack other planets my border planets were more vulnerable. This wouldn't be that bad if a had a bunch of safe core planets... But suprise, suprise! A wormhole where hundreds upons hundreds of ships were constantly flowing out. So how do i handle doing missions and go about doing them?
And 2:
The second thing i tried was to ignor missions unless they were easy for me and just build massive amounts of ships now that part is going pretty well i have split the seam of planets in 2 basically and gotten 4-5 more planets but this poses a problem too. Even with the massave amounts of ships and fleets i have constantly having to defend 5+ choke points is very hard and if i expand i risk losing what i have gained. For example: there was one corner with a 3 planet faction which i thought i could take i send a big fleet there but then lose the 2 planets they were defending and a skeleton fleet would not be enough to take the 3 other planets so leaving ships was not a option and in the end you can put millions of defendses and still get attacked what do i do?
Hmm, well, I'm not expert so, this is just IMHO..
Well, if you are already controlling the majority of space, and the AIs are consistently ganging up on you, then I would probably hunker down.
1. Do you have hanger defenses and repair platforms? Usually 4-6 hanger defenses + 3-4 repair platforms put together will strengthen your defenses to no end. At the later stages in the game, when enemies usually have bigger/more powerful ships, I usually do all bombers instead of fighters. Add some 5 or 6 light frigs + 5 or 6 LRMs, and the planet becomes a real hard nut to crack. I had one such planet with exactly this config versus a fleet with a bunch of hoshikos, a kol, bunch of frigs, LRMs, seige frigs, fighters, bombers - and my defenses were holding for a very long time with no "backup". Of course, if they send carriers with fighters, you got to micro and take out their carriers first). Point is - such a defense will do two things - repel the attackers completely (if it is not too large, eg. almost all pirate attacks) or delay things for so long that you can take other action (like bring your mobile defense fleet to assist).
2. If the enemy is attacking you with a fleet, sometimes, (if possible), the best defense is a good offense - attack their home planet. In the case of an AI, if you have a strong enough fleet and their home planet is seriously in danger the AI will withdraw (at some point) to come back and help defend. If they come back, and you are strong enough, you may even stay to finish off their fleet. They've just withdrawn from an invasion somewhere else only to drop into another big fight.. It could even be the turning point.. (But Gen. Patton did successfully do this in WWII to rescue the 506th at Bastogne tho
3. Unless you are talking about asteroids, don't try to take more than one planet at a time. There is only so much "pause, build, move" you (a mere human can do. Always favour planets over asteroids. You will eventually choke the enemy of thier supplies etc. Aside from Crystals, Metal and Credits, Planets give one very important resource often overlooked by players - logistics slots. Enemies can't easily rebuild frigate factories if they don't have enough logistics slots. If you are attacking asteroids, and you already have a good base back home, don't bother colonizing it just yet, just whack the asteroids and leave it "unowned". If the enemy needs/wants it, let them have it, but they've got to start all over. And to make thier life hell, leave a couple of frigs behind, any new construction will be very difficult, and the enemy has to commit a large force just for an asteroid? Missing the forest for the trees I think.
4. Know when to withdraw. Sometimes, harrasing the enemy is good enough. I go in with a huge fleet, whack their mining ops, frig factory and R&D labs and some of their defenses and run.. Sure, I could have stayed to fight and probably win the planet, but this causes the enemy a whole lot of trouble to rebuild their base. And it distracts their other ships by getting them to come back. While their other ships run home to momma, I jump somewhere else (easier), whack it and gain a beachhead. Build defenses like point (1) with my fleet there to help protect until the (1) defenses are stable enough.
I hope these suggestions help.. Try them on your nearest/weakest enemy. Do it one at a time.. In the scenario you describe, it is more of a war of attrition than a "crush them all" kind of battle. Again, IMHO.. Good luck!
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
