No problem; I actually enjoy helping people out with strategy.



Something is slowing you down here, because the normal AI shouldn't be that advanced so early.  On most maps, you should have at least 5 planets under your control within the first 15 minutes of the game. By the 30-minute mark, the entire solar system should be colonized.  I suspect you're probably moving slower than this, and your defeat was largely determined in the first 30 minutes of the game.

I'll give you some advice to pace yourself after I'm done responding to your specific issues.



Every frigate you churn out for defense, your opponent churns out one as reinforcements.  If you aren't producing ships faster than your enemy, you need to be inflicting casualties faster.  The best way to do that is to have a healthy dose of repair power (lowers your own casualty rate) or to have a better balanced fleet.



Don't mistake relentlessness with mindlessness.  That's a hard distinction with the AI, since it's actually not that smart beyond its ability to keep an empire running smoothly.  As I've already mentioned, it's very slow with fleet-wide manoeuvers and quite predictable if you're scouting.

Timing and logistics are huge in this game.  You use distance to your advantage, and deploy your units so you can attack the enemy where he's weak.  However, a smart enemy (again, the AI is bad at this) is constantly deploying his units to thwart you.  It's very much a game of cat and mouse where both sides attempt to get the upper hand and win key battles.



Technology has its place, but like anything you have to use it to its fullest and capitalize on the advantages it gives.  Most upgrades give in the neighbourhood of 30% bonus when completed. 

Sheer numbers gives you the most muscle for your buck, and for small fleets (less than 30 units) the only technologies you should purchase are unit prototypes and maybe health and armor upgrades.  However, once you start building larger fleets technology becomes relatively more competitive, and the cost of increasing your fleet size (upkeep) becomes restrictive.  This is when you buy upgrades.



There's no miracle formula.  Most of us play on randomly generated maps, so at best all we have are rules of thumb.  The key is to keep a constant and steady pace.  Time is your most precious resource, and you must use it wisely.

I'm not advocating being the proverbial "hare".  I'm advocating being the proverbial "tortoise".  Slow and steady, keep the pace.  At the end of the day, units only move so fast, so if you maintain a steady pace you can stay competitive.


At the start of the game, your top priority is to build your capital ship and dispatch scouts.  You should have the entire map scouted within the first 10 minutes.  However, you don't wait for this to start colonization.  The second your capital ship completes you send it to colonize the nearest planet.

Avoid delays, and plan your next colonization target before you're done clearing the present militia.  A good idea is to send your capital ship ahead once the dangerous militia are cleared out and leave a few light frigates behind to clean up.  Another strategy is to kill the Krosov siege frigates first and then colonize the planet and build turrets to kill the remaining defenders.  Alternately, you could build a repair platform to heal your capital ship before moving on to the next target.

In any case, the goal is to keep moving.  If your capital ship is sitting idle, that's time that could be spent colonizing new planets.  As well, planets with low militia counts (5 or less) can easily be cleared by frigates alone, and you don't even need to concern your capital ship with the matter. 

All the while you should be scouting and paying attention to the enemy.  Your goal in the first 20 minutes of the game is to take the lion's share of the solar system and preferable some strategically valuable planets that form choke points.

How you do the above and which planets you colonize in which order is up to you.  The first 30 minutes of the game are all about empire building.  You still need to be scouting and mindful for where the enemy is (on many maps they will start closer to you) and have a military ready in time to confront them, but if you keep pace this should be no problem.



Also, I repeat myself: can someone get this guy a replay!?  I think it could really help him out to see what I'm talking about when it comes to pace. 

I don't have a replay handy, but I will give you a set of instructions.  As John Connor said in The Teriminator, "Do what I say!  Do exactly what I say!  Don't make a move unless I say!  Don't make a sound unless I say!  Do you understand?  DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!?"

Follow these instructions and you will win.  Note that these are not instructions on how to enjoy the game - you can figure out how to do that on your own later.  These are simply instructions on how to win, since that seems to be what you are having trouble doing.

1) Select small random map.  Normal difficulty.  ALL SPEEDS NORMAL OR BELOW.  Pirates off.  Normal start.  Normal fleet size.

2) Select TEC or Vasari as your race, because the unit build I'm going to give to you is easier to achieve with those factions.

From here on out, note that THERE IS NO TIME DELAY OR DICKING AROUND WITH ANYTHING, PERIOD.  When the game starts, you start moving on these instructions.  The only time there should be a delay is if you are waiting on resources - that's it.  Make sure you know how to use the black market to buy/sell metal/crystal.  Also, understand that as soon as you take an asteroid, upgrade planet population one time.  All other planets you take, you will upgrade planet population two times.  Again, you don't dick around to do this (or anything else), YOU DO IT AS SOON AS THE PLANET IS COLONIZED.

3) Game starts.  Sell 200 metal.  Build at least 1 scout per phase lane leading out of your homeworld (a minimum of 3).  Set scouts to autoscout by right clicking on autoscout.

4) Build capital ship factory.  Queue up the colonizing capship.

5) Build 1 colony frigate.

6) Build 1 military lab if you are vasari, or 2 military labs if you are tec.

CHECKPOINT:  3-6 should have taken you around 10 seconds to queue up.  If it didn't, you did it wrong, so quit the game and do it again (and again, and again).  Note that I'm not saying the structures and capship should be finished within 10 seconds.  I'm saying they should all be queued up and building (note that you don't need the capship factory fully built to queue up a capship - you can queue it up as soon as the factory starts building).

7) Research lrf (long range missle frigate) if you are TEC, or assailant if you are vasari.  Of course, if you need crystal, buy it.  You don't need to wait for your labs to finish building - go ahead and queue up the research.

8) As soon as a scout uncovers the asteroid which should be connected to your homeworld, send your colony frigate ALONE to take it (if there is no asteroid connected to your homeworld, quit the game and restart it).  As soon as the colony frigate jumps to the asteroid, colonize it (buying metal/crystal if necessary), then build a turret as close as you can to the asteroid, while at the same time being as close as possible to the siege frigate firing at the planet.  If you do this correctly, the siege frigate's bombs should be passing through the turret.  If this is happening, you know it is in the correct location.  Retreat with your colony frigate - the turret should kill the militia.  Upgrade planet population, queue up all extractors.  If you lose the colony, you did this entire thing wrong.

CHECKPOINT:  All of 8 should be accomplished within 20 seconds or so of your frigate arriving to the asteroid.  In other words, the roid should be colonized, the population upgrading, the turret building, the extractors building, and the frigate retreating.  If it takes you appreciably longer, you are doing something wrong, so do it again (and again, and again).

9) Mash "build lrf" or "build assailant" over and over again until either funds run out, or you've built so many that you've reached your population cap.  When your fleet cap has been reached, research the next upgrade for fleet cap, and mash "build lrf/assailant" more.  Never stop mashing that button for long.  You should never have money laying around not being spent.  If your money isn't being spent on labs, research, upgrading colonies, or upgrading your fleet cap, it should be spent mashing that "build lrf/assailant" button over and over again.  If you have money, metal, or crystal just laying around, you are doing something wrong.

10) Send capship to nearest asterioid, terran, or desert planet your scouts uncover (but NOT the roid you sent the colony frig to).  If there isn't a terran, desert, or asteroid around, then send it to the nearest ice or volcano.  Kill the siege frigates guarding the planet with your capship, colonize the planet (if terran or desert or asteroid), upgrade population, then drop 1 or more turrets next to your capship, depending on the severity of militia there.  Queue all extractors, kill all militia, move to next nearest planet, rinse, repeat.  Never stop this capship from moving.  It should either be en route to a planet, fighting at a planet, colonizing a planet, or possibly repairing itself somewhere.  If you had to send the capship to a vlocano or ice, just kill eveything there and move on.  You can't currently colonize that type planet yet.

11) If vasari, when funds permit drop 1 civ lab at your homeworld and 1 civ lab at your asteroid.  If tec, upgrade the logistics at your asteroid and drop 2 civ labs there.  Research either ice, volcano, or both, depending on what you have near your homeworld.

12) You never stopped building your lrf/assailants, right?  Send that fleet of assailants/lrf at your homeworld to meet your capship.  If your capship had to skip planets, just kill everything at those planets on the way to your capship.  Send your colony frig to any nearby volcano/ice worlds that have been cleared, and colonize, remembering to upgrade planet population twice, and build all extractors.  Select your homeworld at this point, and set the rally point of that planet to be your capship itself.  For the rest of the game, remember to keep mashing "build lrf/assailant," upgrading your fleet capacity when necessary.

13) Just keep on colonizing, moving towards the general direction of your enemy.  When you see an enemy planet, attack it with your entire fleet.  Kill everything there, bomb the planet, take it, then move on to the next one.  If you lose your capship, build another one so that you can continue bombing planets and colonizing them.

You should have won the game, rather easily.

@Agent: So you say that he's an idiot for not figuring it out?  I sucked at this game until I got on the forums and started talking about it...

@Joe: Agent is the local..  Cynic..  I mean no offense to him when I say this, but it is true...  Also, if you ever find Darvin or Annatar answering a question, you can know that you have someone who is willing to continue until you have your problem solved.  Also, if the person answering is JohnJames (best Sins player out there), Tyr, RagingAmish, or a few others of the ultra elite players, do exactly as they say.  They know what they are talking about and could slaughter most of the community in their sleep.

Also, the AI loves to use LF early game, but LF are easily countered by LRF (or Javilis Long Range Missile Frigates if TEC).  LRF are the best damage dealers in the game, but they are not by themselves a perfect fleet (though they can win against the AI oftentimes...  I think part of your problem may be an inadequate knowledge of counters...  There is a thread in the strategy section that discusses that.  I may make a graphic at some point to point all the newbies coming in to that would make more sense than the current chart.

Most importantly though, I think you should remember that you need to constantly colonize.  There should almost always be an asteroid beside your planet.  Get that.  Just send in two LF to kill off the militia (actually, just order them to attack the siege frigate) and wait till your Akkan arrives with Colonize+ selected as the first ability.  If the Krosov Siege Frigate is still alive, kill it off.  If not, colonize and send your capital off to its next destination.

The AI is not a cheater, but rather it simply makes smarter early game decisions than you are.  There is no big thing that you should do, but its just a lot of small things that add up to make the game impossible to win.  I recommend visiting the strategy section.  It has some good things for you to see.

 

EDIT: Hey, I made that counters graphic.  If you would like to see it, head over to the strategy section.  Hopefully it will get stickied so that it will be able to help out others better...

So maybe you pushed - or the = button which changes game speed.... and if thats the case, kuddos for keeping up for 30 mins at that speed.... Wonder how many clicks the comp would have......

So i figured out what i was doing wrong, i slowed it down to normal speed, now i seem to be able to hold my own.

If you're playing Diplomacy, just turn the pirates off - because they are broken.

To elaborate: in a pure FFA game (everyone on a separate team with unlocked teams) the AI is designed to gang up on the human player (how much is largely determined by AI difficulty and how well the player is doing in the overall match - the better you do the more the AI will try and attack you at the same time).

Locking teams disables formation of cease fires and other treaties, so the AI is mostly forced to treat each player the same. You won't have an instance where 2 AIs are attacking you but not shooting at each other, for example.