The 122 star victory / 10 players indicate 24 stars per player galaxy.
dark galaxy, lvl 3 scan, with common and expensive Warp gates.
Far distance, starting 3 stars. $1000, 3 Sci.
Turn based 8 tick jump, 24 hr wait.
I won by avoiding unneeded combat.
#1 Stay off of the top of the leaderboard until I could achieve near decisive EIS supremacy.
#1a Set up an abandon stars area along an edge of the map.
#1b When attacking a specific AI, grow very slowly. Abandon a star before attacking the next AI star to conquer.
#1c Set at least 1 raid/payday against that AI Econ infrastructure. This will slow down the funding they get for EIS builds and tech trading. Make sure they can take the stars back from you before the next payday tick. Else you suddenly top the leaderboard, and suffer attacks by all other neighboring AI that you cannot afford yet to bribe.
#1d avoided Ind purchases to allow more Econ / Science purchases, bribes, trade. No need for fighters if I was not planning any attack for over 500 ticks. Besides, TF tech is ever building, allowing me to buy Ind much later at further discounted $ prices.
- Continually trading W tech with the 33 star AI at the top of the leaderboard was very important. That AI leader was denied tech trades from all other AI. ~1500 ticks of trading with only me, put that star count leader about 150 tech levels behind the major AI trade partners by the time I vaulted past him on the star count.
- I searched for trades among the AI just about every payday tick. That is the best time to trade tech, since every AI is flush with credits. Trading on follow up turn jumps may need a bribe follow up since they may reach insufficient credits to send over tech for your trade (more expensive).
- With the star count capped by whichever AI was at the top. I wanted to get at least 2x econ of the large AI empires I would have to face. That was why I concentrated on TF research - so allow further concentrations of EIS buys on my limited front of stars…
Notable:
N1 The frequently trading AI’s build EIS on pattern of about 2.56 / 2.04 / 1.00 .
Examples:
Tick 824: EIS 330/296/139
tick 1440 EIS 990 / 780 / 385
tick 1769 EIS 1291 / 1044 / 515
tick 2280 EIS 2600 / 2060 / 1020
N2 An AI who suddenly gets to the top of the leaderboard will tend to stop growing star count. The lead traded frequently in the initial 824 ticks. The one who took over at tick 824 did so by KO of another AI from a long war.
N3 Hostile AI tend to attack live players from within 15 ticks plain travel distance. This left them vulnerable to deeper WG-WG raids.
N4 Top 5 AI’s on the leaderboard will tend to buy at least 1 carrier / payday. I think it allows live players to incrementally catch up to giant AI’s trading techs.
N5 After a certain point before tick 1000, AI will not war against other AI. They seemed to be reserving combat capacity for live players at top the leaderboard. They are also very content to trade with each other. The trade partnerships appear segregated by tiers based on empire and infrastructure size.