Is there any way to get a culture or tech win without a strong military?

You can currently bluff the AI with a military that it thinks is competitive with it when in fact it's not. At first use starfighters, later switch to anti-matter missiles. The attack values per maintenance cost of these two units allows you to build lots of them which keeps the AI off your back, and they are so cheap to maintain that they have little effect on your economy (both have maintenance costs of 1).

The disadvantage to this is that you are a paper tiger, if you go this route you -must- make sure you don't actually end up in a war or you'll be pulverized unless it's fairly late in the game and you have a lot of a-matter missiles.

The current method the game uses to evaluate your military strength is too oriented on your attack value (I've heard it is solely oriented on it), which is why the above method works. I suspect that sooner or later Stardock will find a better algorithm that takes ship's hitpoints and defensive value into consideration as well. They definitely need to, because right now the game seems to think that 2 starfighters are more militarily significant than a battlehammer, and they cost 33% less to maintain and almost 66% less to build the two of them vs. one battlehammer.

Its not so bad with A-missiles from the simple fact that if you out-number the computer, you will chew the computer up every time. The assuming the computer has 50 dreadnaughts to your 100 missiles, I give the odds on the guy packing the missiles since they will trump the 50 dreadnaughts. And since the missiles are cheap to build, you're always going to be able to crank yours faster than they can crank theres. So on the standpoint of the missiles, I disagree.

Think of it is alot like how our nukes keeps the enemy countries back. They may have a bigger conventional military...but what good is it if the missiles chew them up?

I got into an a-missile war once, and came out in better shape than the AI, so its not *that* bad.

SeanB

Re anti-matter missiles I agree, that's why I qualfied my 'paper tiger' statement with the 'unless it's fairly late in the game' qualifier. But against humans they wouldn't work, they are short range and have no defense, a ranger fleet (or for that matter, a starfighter fleet) would kill an entire planet's worth of missiles with them never getting a chance to fire a shot. The computer though, isn't nearly as effective at dealing with them.

If a human caught you going all a-m missiles they'd go all starfighters, outproduce you 6 to 1, and even when they lose a ship they'd still win because it's not a victory to take out a 50 cost ship with a 300 cost missile. But the AI isn't sophisticated enough to see this.

Also, it's worth noting that using your a-m missiles has the potential to greatly lower your military rating, thus setting off a chain reaction of other AIs joining the war if your strength keeps dropping as you fire them off.

The algorithm isn't perfect, but I'm not so sure it would necessarily be better to have a more representative one. Take defense and HPs into account and turtling becomes a cakewalk with stacks of BattleAxes.

The starfighter/corvette route of keeping the AI off your back is balanced in my mind precisely because of its paper tiger aspect. One alliance gone wrong or one of those random events that throws you into a war and you'll wish you'd actually built up a military.

Further, on higher difficulty levels, it's often the only way to stall the AIs long enough to get a real military in my experience.

My military is rarely very strong when I win by culture, and often under 100 in the ratings. However, by the time I make my big move, all the other empires (of any size anyway) like me. Then after you start assimilating their worlds, your army becomes stronger, comparatively speaking, because they can't support their large armies anymore.

The most important decisions the computer makes involves military calculations, it has to be able to do these with some degree of accuracy or the entire concept of 'good AI' goes right out the window. Right now the computer can't figure out that 5 dreadnaughts are vastly more powerful than 20 starfighters, and that's IMO a major problem. My military power ranking should not be 33% higher than the nearest computer AI when all I have is starfighters and they have dreadnaughts and rangers (2-3 of which could wipe out my entire defensive navy).

For the comp AIs to play this game effectively they must be able to figure out how they stand vs. the races around them. It's especially significant in GalCiv because currently the comp AIs beeline for dreadnaught tech, which means they bypass a lot of infrastructure tech to do that, only to have themselves bluffed out by someone who researched maybe 2-3 military techs then went pure infra.

Turtling currently -is- a cakewalk, this change wouldn't make it easier it would make it harder (would require more reseach, longer build times, and more maintenance). A-M missiles would still be valid turtle tech, but starfighters alone wouldn't be.

The corollary is that the comp's beelining for Dreadnought tech as well as their almost unilateral refusal to trade the majority of military techs to the human player currently requires this sort of bluffing unless you're just going to mimic their "strat". Secondarily, because they think a corvette is such a great piece of military machinery, if you don't "bluff" in return you get bullied out the yin-yang.

Sorry, don't even come close to agreeing with your assessment because I've never managed to beat the comp purely by bluffing. Now maybe that's because I do concentrate on a balanced build up and haven't dedicated myself to creating a gazillion starfighters for my fleet, but this is more of a "cheese" tactic best avoided by not doing it rather than asking Stardock to stop you from intentionally trying to abuse the system.

I recently finished a crippling level game where I never fired a shot, nor was I ever shot at. I started with +20 in Diplomacy, built Diplomatic Translators (and kept them from the other races)... and used that diplomatic edge to my advantage. Early on, I just bought peace with everyone. Sure I was in the hole a little longer than I wanted... and was called a "cheese eating surrender monkey" more than I care to admit, but it worked.

When Defensive Phasers rolled around I built up a small (1 per planet) force of Battlehammers, and eventually had a handful of Dreadnaughts... just enough to keep my military high enough (was still low compared to everyone else) that the threats eventually stopped. Then everyone left me alone to win through tech.

It's those early years that can kill you though. In a simliar game the Altarians came a-knocking before I had any military adn they just wouldn't accept any peace offers... they knew they had me by the balls. Another game... I lucked out and got a free Battleaxe early on. That one ship gave me a military rating far above everyone else for a long time and no one bothered me.

The problem with the attack only calculation is that it makes turtling even easier. I've gotten alot of planets from cultural conquest simply because the AI insisted on throwing huge resources at my strong defenses. Their economies tanked and the planets slowly rebelled. A human player would look at the situation and say, okay, he's turtling, I'll attack other races until I have a huge lead in the number of planets, and then I'll just out research and culture him.

I employ a combination of turtling plus some surgical strikes against any AI's inferior in military to me. Here's a couple things I found with the AI behavior.

Scenario 1.
The following assumes I have influence superiority.

Let us assume that I attack AI's that are probably half to a quarter of my military power. (I had a 300ish military rating at the time, mostly star fighters with some a-missiles). I'll start punching a hole into the center of the AI...perhaps taking down several of their ships in the process and hopefully a planet or two. I try to do this as close to the center of their empire as I can. After I do my damage, I immediately make peace (and if I'm lucky, yield another planet or two from the AI)

What happens is that for some reason, my huge influence propogates over to the planets I took in the heart of their empire, and those planets along with my empire end up assimilating the rest of the AI empire culturally. Other good targets for a surgical strike are any starbases occupying a resource I want (I recently took down a yor starbase and an acrean starbase that were both sitting on two different +Econ resources)

After the fallout settles, I'm in a huge position of advantage, large enough to where I can turn around and strike out at the torians (who are the next target on my list), and then the Altarians (who annoy me)

Scenario 2.
Occasionally (since I typically play evil empires), I'll attack the AI, take down alot of their ships, take a few resources, maybe a planet, then make peace. During this peace treaty, I extort as many techs as I can. Once I do that, I attack again and extort them a second time. On the higher levels, I can get away with this usually 2 times.... after that, the AI gets wise to what your doing and will fight to the end. On lower levels, you could get more mileage out of it.

Also it helps that I had a huge lead on planets at the start of the game since I got lucky and had a huge number of yellows I took right off the bat.

Point being, its difficult to win the game on higher levels without a military. Lower levels, you still need a nominal military to stop the extortions (something I had to learn the hard way early one)

You can win GalCiv without ever firing a shot. Going militarily helps (as the common AI strategy is to pick off the weakest to capture their worlds and get stronger, until there are no longer anyone but itself and its allies left), but you do not have to. However, you do need to maintain a decent military rating.

If you don't want the AI to come extorting, from what I've seen, you need at least 2/3's of its rating from AI you are not on decent terms with. You need 1/2 the rating of AI you are on good to great terms with. (Note: My play experience is only up to Normal, so you guys playing at the higher AI settings may easily have different experiences at what is needed.)

In the latest build, the AI is giving you some tolerance for having a smaller military, based on the amount of trade you are doing back and forth. And that generally means you have a better standing, so...

Comments on the complaints on the military calcs/rating: AMM really add to your strength. But since they are one shot, I agree with those that don't think this is a good 'reflection' on capabilities. How about setting AMM's to only count as much as the current top of the line capital ship? Or maybe just equal to a dreadnaught or ranger (I am not experienced at the larger ship designs)? Since it is one shot, 2 dreadnaughts/rangers are still superior to one AMM in straight offensive capability. Does this sound reasonable?

There are zillions of reasonable military strength calculation algorithms one could come up with that are a lot better than what's currently happening.

I have to agree that the AI more rationally judging your military strength would make for a better and more enjoyable game. And it would eliminate the "cheese" tactic of building a lot of starfighters.

As it stands now, there isn't really a choice. The only way to keep the Genius and Incredible AI off your back is to build a lot of Starfighters, and then Corvettes.

Well, star fighters were 'tweaked' up in attack strength in the last point update (1.03A.057), to help the average player up their military rating early on, from what I've seen posted by Brad and his wonderful team.

Personally, I find building Star Fighters/Corvettes and AMs a bit cheesy to get the AI off your back, when SFs don't seem useful for fighting bigger ships without some serious weapon techs, but that's just my view. SFs have their uses and I think they are a vital ship in early encounters (defending that available resource from alien constructors, for instance ;)), but when it takes 20 of your SFs to defeat an alien battle crusier, then they should only add one BC to your military standing.

OK, then answer me this:

If starfighters/corvettes aren't going to boost your military rating disproportionately, why are they even in the game? Come on, give me a good reason, dare you.

Take away their use of early game military boosting and *nobody* would build them.

In as far as I can tell, they are meant to be used for building a military rating even if they're not exactly durable because, beyond that, they are useless pretty much by the time you might actually be able to launch an offensive strike against another race.

Well, in 1.01 through 1.02, I found corvettes extremely useful. Not for boosting my military rating, but for destroying all the 'little' starbases, constructors, transports, Alien SFs and CVs. Just a couple of military resources and weapon increases enabled corvettes to reliably destroy alien starbases without any defense upgrades.

Corvettes are raider class ships. They are useful for beating on the AI at its weak points. Each constructor killed is one upgrade that has to wait.

Star Fighters are merely the first combat ship. They are useful for harassment, and killing the defenseless. I see Star Fighters like Civ's Militia and Horsemen... merely the first unit capable of combat. Useless for serious fighting, but good at harassing and preventing the spread of the AI via its defenseless "settler" (colony) and "engineer" (constructor) and "caravan" (freighter) units.

Personally, I think a Defender should count more for your military, as it is more likely defending a world, and will beat its equivalent tech ship (star fighters) in combat every time.

Perhaps a system where ATTK * HIT POINTS versus DEF * HIT POINTS for individual comparison between empires would be more appropriate for the AI to use to compare if it can take on someone? Or perhaps each set (Attack versus Defense) both ways (comparing their attack versus defense as well as their defense verse attack)? Again, with missiles only counting as one ship of the other guy's best missile vulnerable ship (as the missile will only take out one ship at best).

Does that sound reasonable? For general chart tracking, merely (ATTACK * HP of Ship) + (DEFENSE * HP of Ship) of all ships should be reasonable to display total strength. After all, having an attack of 5 doesn't tell the whole story of a ship's strength.

Additionally, Defense strength does have that 'if defenders defense is higher then attack, it gains DF/2 when counter-attacking' factor. A minor bit of math to be accounted for, if we want an accurate comparison.

However, one COULD make a case that the AI shouldn't be able to look at the various real strengths, and instead have to guess at it (espionage would of course make this more accurate). Would complicate the game, but it would eliminate the basic omniscience that is gained at the 'who is weaker then me?' evaluation. Not that I'm complaining, but it would force AI and players to run a good bit of their fleet by their opponents' in a way that lets them be seen (war games on the border/etc), so they know not to guess that you are weak...

i've heard that the anti matter missile dont work anymore for tricking the AI into thinking you have a strong military....

How about a system that tracks attack points and defense points seperately? Seriously, if your neighbor has a huge number of attack points, but not many defense points, they're either bluffing or preparing for trouble, but someone with few attack points but lots of defense points isn't much of a threat, but at the same time, that doesn't mean that they're a pushover that you can go to war with just because they can't come after you (at the moment).

The more I think about it, the more I like that idea. The AI could modify its behavior towards defensively oriented civs. The evil military civs could either plan a bigger offensive, or find another way to wear down that civ. The peaceful civs might have a better opinion of that civ without feeling threatened.

On the other hand, just because someone had mostly attack points doesn't mean that you can walk all over them if you invade.

Maybe use atk (+ 1/2 def?) for how concerned we are that they may project military force into our territory, and def + 1/2 atk for how concerned we are that we can project military force into theirs (speaking from the AIs point of view, that is).

The short answer is: No. You cannot win without some military. But apparently you can fool the AI into leaving you alone.

I was playing Normal settings for a while and just started with the more difficult settings. It's a lot harder to maintain the edge and keep the AI off your back. But it does seem that if you survive until Dreadnaught tech, your chances of winning double. And if at the end of any turn your military is twice any other society's, you can win the game any way you want.

Code Monkey, there is no cheese involved in this at all, it's a tactic that is forced by a bad AI algorithm, not something designed to exploit such. If I wanted to exploit this and then strut around like a king then I wouldn't be posting about it here. I'd use it, take the wins, and hide how I was doing it. As I've mentioned in several places, if you actually do build a true defending force you are more likely to be invaded because the AI doesn't value it even close to as much as a force that can't actually defend at all. I refuse to spend a huge amount more construction, maintenance, and research only to have a force that doesn't actually do the job because the AI is broke in this area.

And you seem to be willfully missing the point, which is that currently the AI has no way to determine whether it can militarily handle another civ or not. Its method of determining this is wrong, it is in fact grossly wrong. It messes up the human player as well as the AI player, and it needs to be fixed. Without a fix the AI can't make a valid threat assessment, nor can it make a valid target assessment.

And I make no sense at all about your challenge that the corvette's/starfighter's military power must be judged disproportionately by the AIs or they are useless. They would do the job just fine if they were calced correctly. Yes, it is a limited role, but then they are both extremely early techs, so that makes perfect sense. You can rush with them, especially on smaller maps, if that is your play style. You can hunt constructors and colony ships (and of course, other starfighters/corvettes), and do invasions up to the point of battle axes. What they would -not- do if accurately assessed by the AI would be to act as a defensive force against battleships, dreadnaughts and such, as they currently do.

GalCiv is a game with a strong combat component, even when there is no combat at all. And for the AI's to function at their potential they have to be able to determine win/loss situations accurately.

Oh, one other note, the offensive vs defensive decision shouldn't be made at 1:1 If someone has a total attack of more than 35% larger than their defense, then I'd worry. If the trigger is having an attack larger than defense at all, then I'd be triggering it, because I tend to use battle hammers as defensive units post-1.03.57. I know, kinda expensive as defensive units go, less effective than two battle axes really, but there isn't that much I could do with two battle axes when I upgrade planetary garrisons to dreadnoughts, but having a bunch of battle axes running through the galaxy causing havoc is fun even if they do get swatted the first time a capitol ship finds them.

If GalCiv wasn't mod-able I'd say just use a lookup table that had a value for any ship vs. any other ship, take the values vs. the number of ships for both sides and see how they compare. But because it is a mod-able game you'll need some sort of att/def/hp algo that can do something similar. And I'm not saying that it has to be precise, but it does have to do things like figure out that 4 starfighters don't equal 1 dreadnaught.

And I do think that defense should definitely be rated lower than offense, since the primary goal of these calculations is to determine two things: can they kick my ass? Can I kick -their- ass? A good offensive ship can help in both areas, but a good defensive ship only in the last one.

Perhaps MilValue = (Attack + Defense/2) * Hitpoints, but I haven't tested it to see if that works out or not. That would give a starfighter a value of 35 and a dreadnaught a value of 800, which would mean you'd need 22-23 starfighters to counter 1 dread which is a lot more realistic than the current situation. Battlehammers would have a value of 340, to give some perspective on that. A-m missiles would be a problem with this formula, not sure if anything else would be, can't tell just by eyeballing it.

You know, I trust that something will be done to tweak this, but I fail once again to understand the endless complaining that comes from players for things that barely affect gameplay in any meaningful manner.

The current algorithm alters the mix of forces you should build first to avoid conflict...

And this is different than it would be in an ideal system how? Fine, so now your best bet is to build 4 Star Fighters/Corvettes in each system early on, change it so it's representative, you build 4 defenders/Battle Axes. The algorithm determines the build order, gameplay doesn't actually change.

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The current algorithm can let you turtle and ride out aggressive AIs...

Maybe I'm some moron, but I like the fact that a cocky AI will sometimes declare war on me only to get beat like a redheaded stepchild because it's running around with battle cruisers while I've filled my systems with battle axes - it's called fun in a game.

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This is a game for *me* to win through some thought. I don't need the military evaluation algorithm to decide whether I should attack or roll over like a dog to a given AI. Given the system, I play to accomplish what my goals are, be that to turtle, to conquer the galaxy, etc. What the AI is thinking of me is only important in so much as I have to play that system in the context of my goals. I didn't buy this game for a military simulation, and I don't find that anything is removed from the game by the present system.

Like I said initially, I'm sure it will be tweaked, like everything else in the game, and then I'll adjust. But the game isn't going to be any more or less fun just because somebody alters the evaluation algorithm, it will just be different.

The easiest way to evaluate military strength might be achieved by including a battle simulator in game. If the simulator produced the following results on basic units without any bonuses for example:

1 Excalibur can kill 3 Overlords
1 Overlord can kill 5 Dreadnoughts
1 Dreadnought can kill 10 Corvettes

We could weigh the four units above by arbitrarily assigning Corvettes a military power of 10, thereby making Dreadnoughts 100, Overlords 500, and Excaliburs 1500. Any attack, defense, or hit point bonus would then be added on top of these pre-determined values to arrive at the final military power. Since some units are better attackers than defenders and vice versa, we might want to assume 50% of the engagements are attacks and the rest defense to average out the results. Unit comparisons will have to be made in a tiered manner (i.e. strongest, to next strongest, to next next strongest and etc.) so Anti-Matter Missiles will never be pitched against Star Fighters and skew the results. Non combat units will naturally be excluded as well. Such a feature shouldn't be too difficult to implement and ought to be quite reliable with user mods.

Heh. In the last game I won (Gigantic/Crippling, 8000mpt), I think I built maybe a dreadnaught or two and an overlord... all by accident, and I decommisioned them immediately (had no use for them). Other than that, I only built constructors, freighters and colony ships.

Had +70% pop growth, and (I think) +20% diplo. I started out in a good sized cluster all to myself, sitting, as it turned out, between the Tor, the Arceans and the Altarians. Once the planet-rush had finished, we all had about the same amount of real-estate (later I would find the Yor in about the same position, and the poor Drengin stuck in a cul-de-sac. They surrendered early ) It became obvious fairly quickly that there was no way I was going to out-muscle any of these guys and still keep my infrastructure up to spec, so went for a good-guy trader strat. The influence readout also showed that the Torians were *definitely* gunning for an influence win, and as they were my closest neighbour, I'd need to keep my cultural head above water if I wanted to win.

I made sure I *always* chose the 'good' option when colonising (and in subsequent events), turbo-researched trade and set up trade-routes with the Tor and Altarians ASAP. The Arceans shared a large cluster with the Altarians, and I gambled that a) they'd end up fighting sooner or later, and the Altarians would win. I was right on both counts. I pretty much ignored the entire weapons and defense tech trees and hammered on trade, diplomacy and influence techs, buying the relevant wonders as they became available. The Torians stayed Friendly to me for the whole game (I think my complete lack of military strength stopped them from getting 'Close'). The Altarians hovered around Warm (for the same reason, I suspect). The Arceans were fairly grumpy with me, but were being ground down by the Altarians and kept shaking me down for cash, but they never asked for more that a few thousand, which was chump change for me

Once I hit the top of the trade tree and got the terraformer, I kicked my entire empire over to producing constructors, which I sent out in packs of about 30 to dump culture bombs almost simultaneously across the entire galaxy, then set everything back to social with a little graft for the lab rats. Watching the tidal wave of Terran influence sweep across the galaxy was deeply satisfying. In the end, I got Final Frontier because I couldn't be bothered herding a bunch of constructors to some God-forsaken Torian outpost

~SDC~