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Its almost the only thing the ai got right: dont devellop small planets,
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I strongly disagree. That's one of the major reason why I think the AI in this game really suck: they simply can't do anything right.
I always colonize all the planets which are available for me. I of course colonize the most useful planets first... But leaving uncolonized planets in your systems only lead to big and even bigger problems in the long run.
Here is the list of the bigger problems in order of importance:
- 1: Production, ressources and especially population in strategy games are exponential. Meaning that the better the start of your civilization, the higher the maximum end output will be. This can be reflected in mathematics as a linear graphic. The maximum possible is a straight line from the very start to the very end, while the real output would usually be lower with a lot of curves with human players.
Leaving opportunities behind, those you can accomplish and which can't harm you in the short or long run, simply serve to lower your maximum output. There is no way around this fact, other that you of course don't need the maximum output to win most strategy games (especially not Ascendancy).
Since you practically give out free resources and, more importantly, free research away by not colonizing all the planets that you have at your disposal... You are giving away part of your total production and speed of research.
- 2: Not colonizing all the planets in a system right away often lead in having them claimed by an opponent. They can then in turn create an outpost and, if not taken care of swiftly, can be a real pain in the behind. Sometimes you need to take care of a huge territory with a small amount of ships and it's simply impossible or really hard for you to react fast enough, and you get stuck with the problem.
Colonizing all your planets right away nullifies this problem since the AIs in this game are too dumb to colonize the most nearby worlds by force. They prefer to design and send "colonizers" to the nearest uncolonized system to "expand" their territory. This of course lead to even bigger problems for AIs since it is way harder to defend further colonies efficiently, and I always end up grabbing those colonies by force. To return to the subject at hand, it also mean in the early game that colonized planets are virtually invincible up to the point when you can actually afford to build ships which are not purely designed for colonization or for attack/defense. This leave you a long time before you can worry about being invaded, peace of mind and a winning strategy.
- 3: If you look at the definition of strategy games in the dictionary, you will probably see micro management written right next to it. MM can't be removed from good strategy games because otherwise you would end up with an automated action game commonly referred as RTS games. If you really can't stand MM, strategy games are probably not for you...
-EoF