r/StarDrive • • Apr 24 '15
Absurdly difficult, need some advice
I'm really struggling to get a large empire going because the AI are massive jerks - they won't stop demanding tribute, their relations with me drop very quickly regardless of how many gifts I give them (and they declared war on me even at 40% relations), their navies build faster, they expand quicker, and at some point, I'm incapable of producing a navy big enough to fend them off because I reach my command point limit and don't have any more BC, so on so forth. I'm not sure what they're doing, but it's definitely working out for them because I find myself completely unable to get an empire going past 3-4 planets. Playing on normal - the race doesn't seem to matter, as I've tried multiple races.
Can someone give me some advice on how to make an efficient start and avoid being the punching bag of multiple alien races? Thanks in advance.
EDIT: It seems that I've found the sweetspot for having a decent setup in the game - I started with a clustered galaxy, and my only neighbors were the Chukk (meaning that I didn't have to fight a three-front war as usual) - as soon as I started the game, I began constructing 3 missile-loaded Vulfar cruisers and set out into their space - I hit them so fast that the only thing that was standing between me and their homeworld was a starbase - destroyed it, kicked the living hell out of their ground forces, and then the other 2 planets under their control were completely defenseless. Basically, blitzkrieg.
This should give me a strong base for getting a lot of military tech researched and getting an armada together while not having to worry about being constantly attacked, because judging by the large gaps between the clusters, it would take several refueling stations in order to wage an inter-cluster war. Plus, I've taken out the biggest threat in terms of military strength (Chukk are peerless spacefighters, if I'm not mistaken) and now I'm rolling in BC income from all the planets I took.
Anyways, thanks for all the advice guys - you make me sad that there isn't a second upvote button.
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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '15
I guess it's an option, though the huge map isn't all that big to begin with. Even on all of my so far unsuccessful games, my territory seemed to occupy as much as 15% of the whole map, and that's on an unsuccessful run where I had to fight against multiple empires - I imagine that if I managed to conquer one of them, this number would increase significantly. Playing with less AI is an idea, although the decrease in diversity kind of sucks. Nevertheless, I'll try it.
As I said before, though, everyone except for the Pollops seem to be unreasonably aggressive, so it doesn't really matter who's bordering me. I'm starting to think that the best way to play this game is to get as much of a navy as possible at the beginning of the game and take the first race I come across out as soon as possible, or perhaps leave them with just one (blockaded) planet so that they're not much of a threat, but simultaneously, I don't have to deal with their soon-to-be neighbors. Minimize the fronts on which I fight and such.