but I've never been able to deal with Awakened Empires
Yeah, I was just starting to get cocky when my Fallen Empires awakened... now I know what you mean.
Playing on Grand Admiral, 5x, year 2288.
While I usually have no problems fighting my neighbouring AI-empires, even if they have way more fleetpower than me (at least upto the first 80 years), I find it surprisingly tough to fight awakened Empires. Even their starbases usually come at a minimum of 170k fleetpower with around 635k combined hull/a/sh (more if you also look at the 4-10 defense stations surrounding them). This makes them tougher than every spaceborne or other monster except the crisis itself. And so far I have only mentioned their starbases and not their fleets.
I am not complaining.
Awakened Fallen Empires are really not supposed to be push overs.
To be honest, I really appreciate the challenge. It's 2288 and just 2 game years ago I thought it might start to get boring after having tributized half the galaxy. No, it won't. At least not for a while...
My primary experience with an Awakened Empire was where the was only one (Can't remember which it was) and they attacked me for being to aggressive.
Same here. It was probably the xenophile FE.
After seeing how many escort-ships the Awakened Fallen Empire started to constantly produce and considering it only a matter of time until they would decide to attack the meanest slaver and worst warmonger in the galaxy (me), I thought it wise to make a pre-emptive strike.
Strength comparison:
My biggest fleet consists of 21 BBs with a formal fleetpower of 92k. Altogether my fleets add up to almost 450k fleetpower.
Naval capacity is 1484 (of which only 1063 are used due to seemingly having never enough alloys).
The kind of standard fleet of the Awakened Empire seems to be 8 battlecruisers plus around 32 escorts, roughly 400k fleet power. They (talking in plural but meaning only 1 FE) have around 6 of those fleets and do like to combine them if necessary. This means they have around a combined 2400k fleet power in comparison to my 450k.
My strategy:
1) Shy away from direct fleet battles (because losses will be horrible even IF I'd win the battle)... except I find very small enemy fleets (which are usually scattered newly built escort-ships).
2) Try to conquere the planets from the Awakened Fallen Empire (now called AFE)
To achieve
2) conquering planets I must fight the starbase in that system first. In every battle against plain AFE-starbases I try to use my whole fleet and still take losses and severe damage. The AFE-planets with the smallest ground defense have 584 strength, the strongest 3500 strength. So prepare to build LOTS of assault armies or, much better, your best Gene Warriors plus some Xenomorphs. I am having more than 50 gene warrior armies right now, constantly building more (because, yes, I was a bit too cocky when deciding on my pre-emprive strike against a AFE).
To keep the conquered planets, I station some armies. Nevertheless the AFE has assault armies, too, and they are truly elite. There is no other way, at one point one needs to catch and destroy them, best done if the AI leaves them "undefended" in a system. With undefended I mean every situation with no full AFE-fleet in the same system. If it is "just" a starbase with several hundret k fleetpower, go for it. It's half the victory if you manage to destroy those armies because it secures your own and your conquered planets from the AFE even without ever achieving fleet superiority.
To achieve
1) avoiding direct battles (in my scenario I'd loose any straight battle anyway or only gain pyrrus-victories) I find 2 things important:
# Speed... obviously... but the important part is that your battleships are faster (much faster) than the battlecruisers of the AFE. My BBs have a base speed of 217. Adding 15% speed from edict and using fast admirals they achieve a speed of around 290 which makes them faster than the AFE Battlecruisers (speed 225-250)... which is good because my BBs are doing a lot of running away *grin
# ALWAYS keep an eye on the positions of your fleets and make sure that they won't get cornered. If the AI manages to force you into a battle you do not want to fight, jump away to a save location (save as save when also taking into account that your fleet will be on half speed and strength for the next 200 days).
AI battle ability:
There is lots of talk that the battle AI is brain dead.
Well, I am an experienced strat & tact gamer and would consider myself quite good at such games and I am also aware of the severe disadvantages any AI in a strat-game has against a human player... and I must say, kudos to paradox, they did a good job.
Of course, the AI is making "horrible" mistakes. But those mistakes become horrible because as a human I can not only learn and react but I especially have a highly superiour ability to recognize patterns and EVERY AI must use patterns (because nowadays AIs can't really learn but rely instead on patterns).
And what paradox has done, dividing the game in start-/mid- and endgame phases and each phase with its unique opponents which are thrown at you, is a remarkable simple as clever solution to some of the most common problems in 4x-games.
The conclusion:
If you want to have fun, fight the AI when it still has huge advantages in firepower. This actually forces you to think to beat the AI.
This kind of guerilla warfare I find highly thrilling and relies on the basics of guerilla warfare:
# take your time
# wait for the enemy (AI) to make mistakes
# only engage in battles you choose.
While "waiting for the enemy to make mistakes" might look cheap, it is THE strategy to beat a stronger enemy. The only other being the, let's call it the "US-way", of using highly superiour forces. Superiour due to tech or mass or a combination of both.... which is, in terms of gaming, not very thrilling.
I'd love to know how you get a navy capacity high enough to support that, I'm maxing out about 1100 naval capacity, which gives me a rough fleet strength of 500K in 2475
Well, you probably have already done what I am suggesting otherwise you hadn't achieved 1100 naval capacity:
# upgrading your starbases to star fortresses with anchorages and naval logistics offices
# building on planets strongholds and upgrading them to fortresses
So my advice: You just never stop doing so but build more and more... while collecting also all the doctrines etc. raising naval capacity.
While there is kind of a cap on star bases you can build, there is none on strongholds and fortresses. Additionally strongholds can be build efficiently on every planet regardless of hab and type since any soldier will always produce 3 naval capacity, so it's a good fill up on especially your worst planets.
As a matter of fact, in 2288 my restriction is still alloys and not naval capacity because it is rather early in the game and my first (and only) ecumenopolis is still not fully built (10 foundries out of 18 done). Thus it is rather recent that my alloy production got over 1k/month, now at 1890/month, still raising and with lots of other planets besides the ecumenopolis also producing alloys.