help on analysis of defeat

[AlienXing]

Dear all,

I'm rather new to the game (about 80 hours played) and made it that my first real Ironman game seemed to be rather successfull. I already described it in an other article here in the Forum already.

So the Situation was that i owned about 100 planets in 10 sectors. I had a stable govenment plenty of strategic ressources and all factions under controll. My Navy capacity was <3k and i had a Navy of about 100k stremght. I owned about 1/4 of the galaxy and everybody hated me since I gaind space though wars. 1/4 was owned by an AE but they where friendly (+25). Tech was reserched and I was at the 4th oder 5th stage of the repeating techs.

Suddenly two neighbour federations attacked me. They both hat 3 to 4 stacks of 150k navies. I lost both wars and they got about 6 to 8 planets back (since it cost them 5 to 7 warscore by planet - i would have cost me 25 warscore by planet vice versa)... I was the clear techleader and used the typical ship designs.

What did i do wrong? At least i have the Feeling that i totally lost my dominance and for sure my techleadership (maybe because of the big empire - sectors where on "balanced" mode)

Any tips for my endgame?

Big Thanks!

 

[mathers]

Dear all,

I'm rather new to the game (about 80 hours played) and made it that my first real Ironman game seemed to be rather successfull. I already described it in an other article here in the Forum already.

So the Situation was that i owned about 100 planets in 10 sectors. I had a stable govenment plenty of strategic ressources and all factions under controll. My Navy capacity was <3k and i had a Navy of about 100k stremght. I owned about 1/4 of the galaxy and everybody hated me since I gaind space though wars. 1/4 was owned by an AE but they where friendly (+25). Tech was reserched and I was at the 4th oder 5th stage of the repeating techs.

Suddenly two neighbour federations attacked me. They both hat 3 to 4 stacks of 150k navies. I lost both wars and they got about 6 to 8 planets back (since it cost them 5 to 7 warscore by planet - i would have cost me 25 warscore by planet vice versa)... I was the clear techleader and used the typical ship designs.

What did i do wrong? At least i have the Feeling that i totally lost my dominance and for sure my techleadership (maybe because of the big empire - sectors where on "balanced" mode)

Any tips for my endgame?

Big Thanks!

From this it is hard to tell but basically divide and conquer: If folks dont like you then do something about it not wait for inevitable. I am not sure if you had opportunity, but probably you could have take on one of the feds not both.
Also probably at your last wars you preyed on weaklings rather than managing threats.

 

[Alblaka]

Having a ~3k naval limit and only having 100k strength strikes me as odd.
I regularily readch 100k with ~800 navy. And those are the highly-optimized 'player 100k' that crush anything below 'AI 150k' anways.

That said, if you control a fair share of the galaxy, but an even larger share of the galaxy declares war on you, and outnumbers you, you kind of just found the reason for the loss.
I suppose the advice here would be

• If you want to go alone, make sure your fleet is always stronger then whatever is the strongest coalition facing you.
• Otherwise, make long-term allies ahead of time to ensure your coalition is stronger then any coalition who might target you.

 

[Drowe]

You had a fleet that was way too weak, that was your main mistake. If you are that far along in the game, your fleet strength should be way higher. You can easily exceed 100 fleetpower per point of fleet cap used, so with a 3k fleetcap you should have a fleet strength upwards of 300k. That means you were nowhere near your fleetcap. Being far ahead of the curve in tech is all well and good, but fleetpower beats tech advantage in most cases, because having more ships is better than having stronger ships.

 

[AlienXing]

You had a fleet that was way too weak, that was your main mistake. If you are that far along in the game, your fleet strength should be way higher. You can easily exceed 100 fleetpower per point of fleet cap used, so with a 3k fleetcap you should have a fleet strength upwards of 300k. That means you were nowhere near your fleetcap. Being far ahead of the curve in tech is all well and good, but fleetpower beats tech advantage in most cases, because having more ships is better than having stronger ships.

i was on 1200/3000 Navycapa... ok I see the point, well still 90 Planets left and 10 years of peace to get a new Navy ;-)

Thanks for your comments!

 

[Knut Are Mykland]

You should use lower Tech when you are not at max naval capacity. Lower Tech weapons have higher DPS per mineral.
In all other games it is the opposite, but here is some Math:
1.small red laser cost 2.5 minerals and does 1.8 dps, 0.72 dps per mineral.
2.small Gamma laser cost 12.5 minerals and does 2.99 dps, 0.23 dps per mineral.

That is why lower Tech enemies With same Level of mineral Income can beat a higher Tech player With Equal mineral Income. Mining lasers, tier 1 torpedoes, tier 1 mass drivers etc can beat Equal cost modern fleets at short range.

There are a number of Math tricks you can do With stacking -% Upgrade cost as well.
If you game the stellaris system by changeing goverment types you can do some pretty cool Things With that influence.

 

[Alblaka]

You should use lower Tech when you are not at max naval capacity. Lower Tech weapons have higher DPS per mineral.

Whilst this is true, in late game you generally have near-infinite Minerals and your fleet is limited by energy maintenance and the speed at which you can produce it.
Therefore I disagree with the argument that you should gimp your fleet to save a ressource you have in abundance anyways.

I do however take note that it might be very reasonable early-game to stick with tier 1 weapons when minerals are on short supply.

 

[Drowe]

i was on 1200/3000 Navycapa... ok I see the point, well still 90 Planets left and 10 years of peace to get a new Navy ;-)

Thanks for your comments!

That's the spirit, a lost war is annoying, but at that stage no big deal.

 

[AlienXing]

Just to be sure two things I learned in the endgame:

-) Tech Advantage can be outnumbered (rather easy)

-) game ist getting slower over time .... need a new pc

 

[Meneliki]

Suddenly two neighbour federations attacked me. They both hat 3 to 4 stacks of 150k navies.

If you're gonna play the bad guy, you need to be stronger than everyone else. If other empires/federations both hate you and are stronger, you're in for a rough time. To that end, you need to max out your navy cap as best you can. Too energy intensive? Get more energy. As someone else pointed out, 100k fleet power on <3k navy cap seems off. Either you didn't build enough ships, or there was something wrong with their design. If you aren't sure about how to design ships, use 'auto-best' designs until you're more comfortable. (Obv. a knowledgable player can create superior designs, but they're good enough to keep you out of any super lopsided ship quality situations).

 

[GC13]

You should use lower Tech when you are not at max naval capacity. Lower Tech weapons have higher DPS per mineral.
In all other games it is the opposite, but here is some Math:
1.small red laser cost 2.5 minerals and does 1.8 dps, 0.72 dps per mineral.
2.small Gamma laser cost 12.5 minerals and does 2.99 dps, 0.23 dps per mineral.

The problem with this idea is that there are a lot of systems on your ship that aren't weapons. If you're making a medium plasma cruiser with only shields, using tier-one weapons will save you enough power to turn one medium power core into one more shield generator. You end up saving 80 minerals of your 1,130 total cost, and gain 210 shields over your base of 1,050, in exchange for a damage reduction from 34.50/day to 24.82/day.

So you can make and maintain 7.1% more of these guys for the same price, and your cheap one has 7.9% more shield + hull and does 28% less damage. So that's 1.071^2 x 0.776 = 90% as combat effective as just sticking with the high-tech guns.