Zerg rushing first contact on grand-admiral w galdius AI mod

[BarnCape]

Is this possible to pull off consistently? I only succeed in like 1 out of 4 tries.

The game is 600 star galaxy, 18 empired, no advance neighbours, AI aggressiveness high, stellaris_test 2.2.3 branch and ultimate ai mod

With latest version of the AI the first 3 building AI builds are forges, as well as the 4th one if at war.

3 AI forges on grand admiral produce 40 alloys/mon, double of what players 3 forges produce. AI also has starting naval cap I think 35 or so.

My strategy for zerg rushing is like this

1. build only forges.
2. take supremacy first and dont build ships or upgrade starbases until i get master shipwrites and the one for statbase damage and upgrade cost.
3. build out to my 20 corvetted asap, but usually at first contact (due to crowded galaxy) is around 2208, so I have like 12-15 corvettes at the time.
4. Declare war and go for their capital

Where it fails

I'm usually able to capture the capital starbase, and start bombing. But damage accumulation from 12 corvette fleet bombing is very slow, and AI still massivly overproduces me in alloys until their capital is at >50% devastation, which takes a few years of bombing.

Meanwhile while i was capturing their home statbase, AI manages to conjure two 800 strength fleets from its other shipyards almost immediately, and throws them at me before I can finish repairing my fleet at their home station.

Ovetall their fleet powet quickly becomes overwhelming and I lose the war.

Only reliable strategy that worked, is if I'm able to capture all their starbases in the initial rush, but that depends if I have enough fleetpower to continue the blitz after capturing capital, usually I need to repair and thats the delay that makes a big difference.

If you're able to pull this off every time can you share your build/tips?

 

[AlanC9]

Haven't tried it myself, but I thought the idea was to execute before the target builds a second shipyard.

 

[Wolfgang I]

I'm not using the mod but maybe trying to focus on just getting enough corvettes to take the home system and focuseing your other resources on armies would work?
Very strong might help.
Just speculating though.

 

[BarnCape]

i never met AI early game that did not have a 2nd starbase already up, maybe i'm not building enough science ships so my first contact is too late for the blitz

 

[Nakkivene]

Take out the other starbases, build 5 assault armies?

 

[SectorsAreOkay]

Glavius

 

[Glavius]

Glavius

 

[Zenopath]

i have never tried zerg rush in GA with glavius, sounds suicidal

just breaking a basic startbase with basic tech corvettes is actually pretty hard, but you would probably not just need 2 alloy factories
so, how many of your buildings can you convert to alloy factories without breaking your economy? probably 4, maybe 5. at 60 alloy per month could build a corvette every 2 months, get 20 corvettes in 3 years... and keep making them, so you can be over cap naval and be reinforcing them constant stream of 1 corvette per 2 months with your 1 shipyard, which matches maximum build time.

So, can you sustain your economy if your capital has nothing but alloy factories? probably not. be funny to try i guess.

(edit) some quick math, right at start of game you have 5 slots on homeworld that you could use, one of which is already alloy factory, keep the cg factory, add 3 alloy factories to get 4 alloy factories 24x1.15 (26.6) with militirized economy would give you a basic tech corvette every 4 months (your capital gives 5 extra alloy, too, i think) , add 2 mining districts maybe? scrap generator district, close out clerk jobs you guys hate so much, close one out of 4 farmers, take mining guild and a race with +15% mining bonus, could work, 8 miners at 40x1.15 would give 46 mats, plus the mats from a few mining stations, you get like 12 mats right away, you would need a few extra systems... its possible, i would say.

 

[ciurra]

I would try not building your corvettes until you find an enemy ( to save on upkeep) and to explore with your science vessel without surveing

 

[Theter]

Is this possible to take control of the sky instead thus preventing ai from further building fleet ?

 

[Zenopath]

I would try not building your corvettes until you find an enemy ( to save on upkeep) and to explore with your science vessel without surveing

yeah, no, you would need to already be ready to go with 10 corvettes already built when you find someone. start building when you find them? already too late. if you have scaling on, maybe, but GA with scaling on is GA lite. I was assuming GA no scaling.

Though i suppose, you could just be sitting on a massive alloy stockpile, this strategy would really require a full 20 corvettes to hit before year 5 to succeed.

 

[Zenopath]

Is this possible to take control of the sky instead thus preventing ai from further building fleet ?

yeah, you would take their all their outposts and kill every constructor, they'd be screwed, its game over if you have no outposts left (to upgrade), you just sit on their capital and bomb them till they got no army left.

 

[Sayakus]

Rocketvettes might be good thing to use at start in this case, on my yesterday rush AI build a new shipyard and started upgrading starbases in every system. Ended up with so so victory and crippled my own economy a bit.

 

[Zenopath]

i think you would want to play as something that could take outposts during your war. Steal their shipyards build new ships right over their systems.

So, fanatic purifiers or devouring swarm.

i sort of assumed you were already doing that, but dont see your build in OP

of the choices... Devouring swarm would be best.

The 3 workers per district is very OP early game, you go all out with that, get their worlds, eat their people, your economy would suddenly get excess food for EPG and NP, even to sell, don't have to try to integrate what you take. get a bunch of bonuses. Play full warmachine non stop whole game, never slow down, everyone will declare war on you eventually anyways, hit them one by one. Steal their tech from battle debree, don't bother with researching anything yourself...

and your ships get free regeneration. but also, camp their homeworld, build defense stations on their starbase, they will come to you. every time you fend off an attack, counter attack and take a starbase, demote the ones you dont think you can defend, retreat back to their homeworld, which you fortify.

 

[Less2]

i think you would want to play as something that could take outposts during your war. Steal their shipyards build new ships right over their systems.

So, fanatic purifiers or devouring swarm.

i sort of assumed you were already doing that, but dont see your build in OP

of the choices... Devouring swarm would be best.

The issue is that most of the point of rushing is to gain pops (or gain economy through tributaries). If you are eating the pops you really just spent a ton of resources to give you more room in the midgame. Which is valuable, but nowhere near as valuable as getting a new fully-developed homeworld and doubling your pop numbers. The only setup that can play total war while also getting the pops is an Assimilator ME..

 

[Don_Quigleone]

I would pair this with barbaric despoilers/nihilistic acquisition, as getting an extra ~30 pops at the beginning of the game is enough to boom your economy.

The only issue is that you might lack the minerals to build enough jobs for all the new pops. In this case, it may be a good idea to initially make them livestock

 

[Zenopath]

The issue is that most of the point of rushing is to gain pops (or gain economy through tributaries). If you are eating the pops you really just spent a ton of resources to give you more room in the midgame. Which is valuable, but nowhere near as valuable as getting a new fully-developed homeworld and doubling your pop numbers. The only setup that can play total war while also getting the pops is an Assimilator ME..

will your economy take a massive hit from early game zerg rush strategy that involves demolishing your research center and converting everything you make into basic corvettes?

of course.

obviously nothing about doing this is going to make sense in a practical way.

i am just suggesting how you could do it, if you really intended to do it. the fact that eating the pops will give you massive amounts of food production will be pretty helpful to recover some lost ground. i dont know how much food you would get from eating a 28-30 pop homeworld's worth of population, but it is probably in the thousands.

 

[Less2]

obviously nothing about doing this is going to make sense in a practical way.

i am just suggesting how you could do it, if you really intended to do it. the fact that eating the pops will give you massive amounts of food production will be pretty helpful to recover some lost ground. i dont know how much food you would get from eating a 28-30 pop homeworld's worth of population, but it is probably in the thousands.

It's entirely practical and in fact quite overpowered if you get the enemy pops and have them working. As an assimilator I've snowballed to have a third of a medium size galaxy under my sway by 2250.

Eating pops for food is... well it's OK but probably not enough to pay back what you invested.

 

[Zenopath]

It's entirely practical and in fact quite overpowered if you get the enemy pops and have them working. As an assimilator I've snowballed to have a third of a medium size galaxy under my sway by 2250.

Eating pops for food is... well it's OK but probably not enough to pay back what you invested.

maybe your right, if you can do it quick and painlessly, devouring swarm gives you large military advantages. it sounded like the OP was asking how to do it consistently, not how to get most benefit from it. if it were a lower difficulty than GA no scaling with glavius i might even agree with you.

but, i dont think DA would give you the sort of early game economic and military advantages of a devouring swarm, to make the conquest part easier.

also, with DS you do get the keep the planets, you just relocate a few of your own people on to them. with all the food you would get, nutricial plentidude and encourage planetary growth could get those planets populated pretty fast.

 

[Less2]

maybe your right, if you can do it quick and painlessly, devouring swarm gives you large military advantages. it sounded like the OP was asking how to do it consistently, not how to get most benefit from it. if it were a lower difficulty than GA no scaling with glavius i might even agree with you.

but, i dont think DA would give you the sort of early game economic and military advantages of a devouring swarm, to make the conquest part easier.

Sometimes it comes down to hoping the AI does something stupid, like suicide into your starbase. It's definitely hard to do it consistently, sometimes AIs like to overbuild massively early.

also, with DS you do get the keep the planets, you just relocate a few of your own people on to them. with all the food you would get, nutricial plentidude and encourage planetary growth could get those planets populated pretty fast.

It's not even close to comparable. Sure, you get ~2000 food from taking a colony. That's really not that much when you spent 1500 alloys to do it. The colony starts from 1 (working) pop like any other colony. That means a long time to get real productivity out of it. Aside from the influence cost and free outposts and mining stations, it's not significantly different from if the AI was never there and you just plopped down a colony. Totally different from getting 40 or so pops that can fairly quickly be altered to be perfectly happy workers and their planetary facilities swapped to make more alloys and stabilize your other economical problems.

Like I've done DS in a Grand Admiral Scaling game, and even when I control ~30 systems by 2250 I only have a total of ~350 of my own pops on those worlds. That's barely 10 pops per world, the majority of those worlds aren't that efficiently producing stuff and my total alloy production is around 75. In the same situation as a DA I'd have more like 1000 pops and 300 alloys. For a non-scaling Grand Admiral game DA is the only way you are going to snowball your fleet up to crush the AI across the galaxy in a wave of early wars. As a DS you conquer your first 1, maybe 2 empires that have a 2k-3k fleet, then you realize your next target has an 8k fleet and can only think "yeah, time to hang out doing nothing till I can catch up in 30 years".