AI's three-way alliance is killing me!

Since you are in a corner, it might not be difficult defensively. My suggestion is for you to duke it out.

Build military starbases in the occupied sector nearest to your enemies. If possible, park the SBs behind your systems. Park all your defenders in the system and wait for them to kamikaze themselves. With luck that would be their only line of attack. Sue for peace once their military rating plummets.

Alignment is not an issue with sufficient military (and some say economic and influence) might. No need to revert to good if you don't want to.

Gibbie99, in my experience, once Altarians get dreadnoughts and have built them already!, and you were still 24 turns away, the game is all but gone. I sense that if you can pull a victory from your current mess, it will be your finest hour.

Chris' post reminded me of something.

Gibbie, can you hold a savegame of this scenario? We could use this scenario as a Challenge for the experts so that they could show us how they get out of such situations.

Can you outrun the enemy? If you can, outflank 'em and go after their colonies. Don't worry about defending any that you take, just strip 'em of all structures. After a while, your enemies will implode. There are three additional keys to this tactic:

1. You have to be able to defeat your enemies' planetary defenses.

2. You have to produce enough transports and attack ships.

3. You have to have enough room to play cat and mouse with the enemy dreadnoughts heading towards your best planets.

I use this technique when I'm desperate. It's kinda fun pretending I'm General Sherman marching through the South. Burn burn burn BURN IT ALL!!!

Oh KitWarrior. You give me shivers when ya talk like that.

Oh I completely forgot! Silly me. If your treasury is high enough, use Mass Drivers or Core Detonation to intentionally lower planet quality. TURN THE REST OF THE GALAXY INTO WASTELAND! After all, are you painting a pretty picture or are you defending humanity?

Heh. Thanks for the suggestions all, they are all excellent. Raychua, I do have a save game. Do you want it? Email me ([email protected]) or let me know a way to get it to you.

I played a bit more of the game today, I misspoke, I was only 2 turns away from Dreadnaught. Big difference I did the following:

1) Start all my trade with Caratinoids, who were buried in the upper right sector (I was in the upper right quad myself).

2) Marshalled everything I had and sent it to the middle of the Arceans, to the southwest of my planets. I took two of their planets and decimated their forces. After two turns (when i ran out of dreads) I sued for peace and now am rearming.

I expect to only use this tactic once, but now that I hold those key Arcean planets I can do the Alamo thing and have them blitz into me. Once their military ratings go down (all three are about my equal, militarily - so I am outnumbered 3 to 1), I can sue for a lasting peace. Or, hopefully I'll be able to wipe out the Arceans all over again. What's wierd about this is that there is a 3-way alliance, never saw that before I'll post more as the situation develops.

Alliances:
Unfortunately Gibbie, the only way to break an alliance is to ally with the 3 and then somehow get one of them to declare war on you. The other races in the alliance will either join you, join you opponent, or sit on the sidelines and wait to see who wins. Of course, this is all a moot point in your case since if you join the other races in their allinace you would win the game in an alliance victory.

Tactics:
As for you particular situation, I would suggest something like what Kit was proposing, except I would send 2 or 3 battleships and 1 regular transport to the nearest major enemy colony. Your battleships should be able to take out the defenses, while your transport goes in with a structure or PQ hurting invasion. The idea isn't to take the planet, but just to use the mass drivers or core detonations against the planet, rendering it useless to them.

Plus by only sending 1 regular transport, you cut down how many people you send and reduce the cost if you transport is intercepted and distroyed.

Hyena: the planetary effects from invasion only work if you actually take the planet. I use this as a cheese tactic all the time: take a transport or two, invade with core detonators to reduce the defense. Invade with regular invasion tactic and take the planet. Walla.

Your alliance idea made me think of another odd thing. The two allies of the Alterians (who originally declared war on me) did wait a while before attacking. It wasn't until I had my ships at the Arceans planet before they started attacking, and the Torians (who were weakest) got into it a few turns later. Very interesting!

Gibbie, one other thing... if it's not a true 3-way alliance (each allied with both of the others) but rather a matter of X allied with Y and Z but Y and Z are not allied, then you can break one of those alliances by paying Y to declare war on Z. Then whoever X sides with, their alliance with the other will have to be broken.

cit: That's a good idea. I'll try it, if i can get them to stop shooting at me long enough It's true, Y and Z are not allied (Torian and Arcean i think). The alterians just have to be taken out though. They are too goody-goody to live.

Gibbie, if you email me your save game I'll take a look at it.

[email protected]

To safeguard the interests of all parties, it would be best if the serial number could be stripped from your savegame before you send it over to vincible, Gibbie.

I'm not sure how but Michael Casey knows.

Ray is probably correct.

If you do send me the game, bump this thread when you do. That's my spam email and I hardly ever check it.

Vicible: I emailed it to you. The serial number is in game.galaxy, i hex edited it to remove it. Hopefully it should work. If not, you can add your own s/n and it should work.

Anyway an after-action report.

The early phase was described above. I left off at the point where the Arceans, Alterians, and Torians were in a three-way alliance, and the Drengins and Yor surrendered (to me). The galaxy looked somewhat like this:

x x x
x x x x
x x x
x x

o o
o o t
o o o o t t t
o o t t t t
a a
a a a a
a a a a

x = Terran
o = Arcean
t = Torian
a = Alterian

I just had gotten dreadnaught tech, the enemy already had it. I had one military resource, the Arceans 1, the Torians 1, the Alterians 0. Problem was the Alterians, way below me, kept declaring war because their military rating was slightly above mine.

Anyway I did the following. First I invaded the nearest two worlds of the Arceans, and attacked until my Dreadnaught fleet was destroyed. Then I sued for peace from all 3. I rebuilt my fleet, and took another two worlds, meanwhile reducing the Arcean fleet even more. I did another peace treaty, and churned out Dreadnaughts like crazy. I finally ended up with a military ranking 2x more than the others (individually). I then invaded the last 6 Arcean planets, 2 of them I destroyed by Core Detonation.

Once the Arceans were out of the picture, I gained their military resource, and mined it. I also fortified the sectors near the Alterians and Torians with military starbases. I then declared war again, and decimated the Torian / Alterian fleet. The limiting factor (not previously mentioned) was that the Cartinoids, who were in the upper right corner, were my exclusive trade partner (of course, what else could I do), and the AI kept sending all their ships their way. I kept supplying them with Dreadnaughts but the Carts used them stupidly, and was about to be invaded. So finally I had to go to war to remove teh enemy presence from my space. Simultaneously I attacked their planets (since now less than half of their fleet was deployed there). Once I took the Arcean planets, their fleet disappeared of course. Actually, they surrendered to the Torians (with a funny message, something like "even though we can not beat you, we can still defy your victory").

Anyway at the end I had three military resources, and was able to kill 4 or 5 enemy dreadnaughts to 1 of mine. It was a slaughter. But the amount of dreadnaughts was amazing, in the heat of it, dozens of enemy dreads filled the screen, all massing towards my planet. The military resource was probably the deciding factor; once I had them and they didn't the balance quickly shifted. Still, even as their alliance was being decimated, they refused to break it. Playing evil is fun though

I didn't receive the file. Sounds like you don't need any advice though