Multiplayer Blitzkrieg

[afc]

In my MP experience over past several months I've discovered that a brief review on efficient strategy that would allow to produce maximum number of ships in the shortest period possible would be helpful.

Now, there were/are much better guides from folks that are much better players then I am (the most notable one written by the QuakeDevil but this was lost when the forum he posted it shut down), so I do not pretend to be an authority on the matter. There is this Red Squadron Manual (?) floating around that summarizes all the tricks and maneuvers of an efficient MP deciple brilliantly but I am starting to suspect it is more of the lore and legend of the "BotFism"‚

[ruthlessferengi]

after several years of posting it is nice to know that at least this piece wasn't lost...

[Deano23285]

extremely helpful post, i'll have to read it fully and try it all out

[ruthlessferengi]

In the past in the above post I wrote about efficient dil use, partial buys, appropritate morale management, etc. Discussion would be incomplete without dirty question of money at the early stages of the game....

What can really sway the battle with the an experienced vet player is how much cash and how fast you can extort it from ai. that has determined several tourney battles and i am stil learning how to extract all i can. RSE and mickar are prophessional gangsters in this respect and they know more about this than i do...

here is what i learned so far... I am not talking about money you can get from ferengi at turn 30-60.. that's may be too late then in a fast paced mp... this is turn 3 or 4 thing...

build 3 or 4 spys ships right off - and start making contact with AI as soon as possible. If you happen to be encounter the AI that has already donated money to your opponents cause, you are out of luck... the cow has been milked...

you meet the ai, demand money at 10,000 - it takes 2 turns for ai to respond. Meanwhile, park your fleet close to their borders, don't kill their ships, just hail them (they will run anyway - but with no loss of ships they won't get pissed at ye)...after they rejected you twice - some say three times - declare war, hit them hard, and after 3 or 4 turns offer peace. They will pissed off at ye for a turn, then all of a sudden their relation to you is normal - demand again, repeat. Demand until they stop giving, then war, then peace, then demand.

i found it useful to agree to alliances and frienships with ai, some advice it agianst it.... i found it raises morale of the ai race, and their attitude is improved, - they are more likely to give and do so for prolonged period of time.

now, you will quickly figure out that the best race to do this kind of work is Roms... They have no scruples and no penalties for changing sides... Cardes are fairly effective too, as well as klings but klings will suffer huge moral penalties for brekaing existing treaties of non-agression... so be sure to have lots of small battles and declare war on new victims (with no treaty agreements) before/immediately after you've declared war as a kling vs race with who treaty has been signed in the past...

final point, the race that is the hardest to extort cash are feds... they can't really declaire war a lot so anybody who choses to play feds in mp, has my respect - hard race to be devilish and deviant with extortion... hope this helps..


that's where SP games can come in handy... pracitce extorsion in sp, then transfer this skill to mp... same goes for take over of planets and efficient dil use...