Ultimate Map/Settings for Solo player versus Bots

Ohh go on then, I’ll rise to the challenge.

What’s the cycle record to beat @HULK ?

I haven’t played it yet …

But should we go with ONE or NINE starting stars?

I’ve gone for 1 - hoping I can make better decisions than the bots!

First challenge is that I went ahead immediately! Now I’ll have to “let them” overtake me in stars and pay them off :unamused: Not a great start!

Cool … and you did set win by 66% right?

Take a screenshot near the end and/or record the cycle time … because when the game ends, it does not show that - another hint, hint to @JayKyburz fix that … :wink:

Yeah, I set to 66%

To be honest I’ll probably quit before I win (…if I win!) as I don’t like getting victory points for bot games.

In general, I feel the same way too … BUT … you’ll spend a LOT of time fighting the Bots and it’s quite a challenge … so in that case, I don’t feel it’s unjustified to take a win - it’s not like you are getting an instant win … :wink:

P.S. I’m outa town this weekend, but if my schedule clears up, I’ll try the single-star start game next week.

Ok, phase 1 complete!

My initial strategy is to stay just below the lead to take the heat off me by gradually vacating the outer ring (and weakest) stars. This has the added bonus that 2 AIs can go after it at the same time and then start fighting.

Meanwhile I pick on 1 AI and go for the jugular, ignoring the outer stars. A river of ships on looping fleets makes this a fairly painless and quick process.

All along I’m keeping ahead in science and stick on weapons so the bots can never be ahead of me there. I scoop up the other techs through trading and picking off almost completed ones from exp. Now I’ve taken the inner stars from Pink I need to think what my next move will be, maybe attack Red or Yellow who are weak from fighting. At some point I’ll have to take the lead. Here’s end of phase 1… that’s enough for today!

Nice update … and well done taking out Pink’s inner core. Yea, I use a similar approach with weapons tech … but even getting ahead with that, it gets more challenging once you take the lead and everybody gets angry at 'ya!

You might post the URL of the game if anyone else wants to check it out real-time.

Well I managed to balls that up spectacularly… I was getting carried away with Red and forgetting to vacate outer stars… caught up to the top of the leader board and they all turned on me… within 2 turns my central inner core was obliterated.

What’s really annoying was that I was in second place when it happened - I had joint number of stars as yellow, but less ships. Apparently the AI will all turn on your even if you have joint lead of stars.

Probably no point in me carrying on as it’s too expensive to pay the AI off and most of them are now on -5 disposition already (I hate the way that works - they attack you, and then go more negative because you were “defending” the star). Anyway, was an interesting experiment, would be interested to know if anyone else conquers it. Perhaps relocating to the edge is that way to do it?

LOL - told you those AI Robots can get angry at 'ya! -)
Yea, once war breaks out, it all goes to pot.
Good job giving it a go Myk.

I’ll try to give it a shot sometime in the next week.

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If it wasn’t so time consuming I’d really like to try it again… but it did take hours to get that far so probably won’t bother.

@JayKyburz - Would be great if you could save your progress in “single player” games like this.

You should be able to pause the game and just let it sit in your active game list.

OK … so I fired up the single-star example in the first post … and did some major screwups early … so after six cycles, I bailed as I just wasn’t going anywhere.

I started up a new game (same parameters - see below) and am doing MUCH better. I got an early Weapons hit on experimentation and then went all-in against Cyan … and I just got his core at Cycle8 … but am about to take the lead which will then cause the five other formally friendly AI’s (who EACH have more ships than me) to go hostile and gang up on me … so should get interesting! :wink:

After 8 cycles, 192 ticks

Sure, but you can’t go back and reload a saved game after changes have been made (i.e. create snap-shots)… can you?

@HULK - Good luck man, this is when it’ll get tricky! If I was you I’d consider vacating your central hub and migrating completely to Cyan’s - that way, when you take the lead later on you’ll hopefully only have 3 neighbours to contend with, which will be much more controllable.

Agreed Myk that it gets REALLY tricky … so I took my time to build up forces and then put the HULK SMASH on Cyan and just wiped him out - below is how it looks now at Cycle 14, Tick 344.

One AI down - five to go. Combined, they have about 4X my ships and are now all hostile toward me … but I’ve got a Weapons Advantage and Warp Gates are going to start coming into play … so (famous last words), I’m feeling pretty good about being able to grind this one out.

Oh i see what you are saying. Sorry.

This would be nice to add. And in fact in Blight I make a stamp shot of every game in the turn based single player before you hit next turn so you can roll back the turn if you advanced time by mistake!

Would not be too hard to add an option in NP to say, make a copy of a game so it can be reloaded at some future date.

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So the HULK SMASH approach is working pretty well as I’ve taken out Yellow and am now ready to work on Blue - see image below at Cycle 17, Tick 408.

While there still 4 AI’s left that aren’t happy with me being on top of the leaderboard and combined they have about 3X my number of ships, my weapons advantage is increasing as is my use of Warp Gates … so this should just be a matter of time.

Meant to post this earlier, but here’s the URL of the game - password is “1v6”

Three Cycles later and Blue is SMASHED plus I’m starting to take out Red … so this game will only last another cycle or two before it’s over as the combo of Weapons tech and Warp Gates (plus focused moves) will overwhelm the more than double the numbers of ships the AI’s have.

BTW, if you analyze the screenshot below, you’ll see that I’ve been “making friends” with the remaining AI’s by sending 'em cash (and occasionally Weapons tech) … it’s not cheap though!

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Great work Hulk =)