Strategy for cardassians

[Rhuobhe]

I've read the guides but what are some dos and don't s when playing cardassian?

i play tech 1 games with a friend and usually have a hard time progressing if i meet ai too early. if i manage to get late in a game my ships don't seem to do well in large battles.

[JeanLucPicard1]

Playing the Cards at Tech 1 can be tough. They don't have many credits and research is slow. Sitting around at Cardassia and building slowly will get you no where fast.

Exploration is the key to success. Build scouts, troop transports, and colony ships. Colonize planets and begin investing in research and intelligence. Use your troop transports to extend ship range and the scouts for exploration. Try to discover minor races to exploit their weakness and win their bonuses, especially races with research bonuses. The faster you progress, the better chance you have of combating your foes.

Don't worry if you run into enemy territory early; this is a good thing. Scout their territory so you are aware of their offensive and defensive capabilities (number of ships, population, orbitals). As the great Sun Tzu once said, "if you know yourself and you know your enemy, you shall never fear defeat in battle". By knowing this, you'll be able to construct a good defense. You'll also be in a position to quickly mount a counterattack against your enemy should they decide to attack.

Remember, the Cardassians live to exploit and conquer. They have an efficient military; you just have to know how to use it. Their ships have a tactical advantage because they can fire in any direction and have powerful beam weapons. If you play like the Feds, you're only setting yourself up for failure.

[stardust]

A minor race or two with good systems can make a huge difference to your game. i know diplomacy is difficult because not many races have a high opinion of the cards and the lack of funds avilable early on, but with the scrapping of the odd ship here or there usually frees up enough money to win them over.

Even if the minor race's special structure isn't that great, they'll have superior tecnology, and good industry, so your basic ships they can crank out very quickly (get the Benzites, Tellarites or Coridens if you ever play UDM III) and you're laughing, and also gets round the problem that your home system is almost constantly tied up with upgrading buildings.

Besides, even with their military and their supposed ablility to get the most out of conquered worlds, the output is incomparable with that of a system that has willingly joined the union as a member state.

As for their ships, Ramming's used alot by players because of thier high hull stats, but though they're not brilliantly armed, they're cheaper to maintain than the equivalent classes (again from UDM III) from the other empires so safety in numbers is my strategy.

[RSE_Chris]

For your battle problem:

A Cardassian should have no problem in battle. If you are only using weapons, you are not using the Cardassians greatest asset; hull strength.

Cards have the strongest hulls in the game. Ram your opponent using single targetting and you should make short work of your opponent. (Ships still fire while ramming).

[jonboylondon]

Play like a Klingon without honour , remember Cardies dont have same moral penalties and actually enjoy breaking treaties.....

Scouts and destroyers work very well when ordering to ram with a heavy cruiser next to them on assault/charge.....

Intel everyone everywhere all the time....even allies if you have not met anyone else.....

Conquer Minors asap and then build labour camps,forced labour farms (even on home systems) as Re-education centre will balence out....(watch out for the Bajorans though!! )....

Cardy ships are slow and have poor range so dont expand too fast and keep your eyes peeled at all times....



Cardy scouts are excellent as torpedoes, build a shed load (nice and cheap as well) and use as kamakazi fleet on your border while you slowly build up a highly trained fleet of guntubs. The hull gives them an extra clump as they impact against the enemy and the range can solve some expansion problems in the early stages....


JBL

[dennycrane]

When is it better to build a Starbase than only an Outpost with the Cards??

[RSE_Chris]

When is it better to build a Starbase than only an Outpost with the Cards??

Never. Do not built outposts either, unless to expand range on lower tech. Reason being is that they are easy targets for your enemy to destroy and increase their ship experience.

[dennycrane]

So you mean that I should defend my systems only with ships, right?

But what card-ships can I take best if I just want to leave them there to defend???

[stardust]

On Vanilla I gave up with outposts and starbases. If you need extra range, form a colony and then buy wind turbines and a ship yard (make sure it's powered) because ship yards exten range in thew same way outposts do.

If your colonies are quite advanced then build a bunker network and a bucket load of orbitals. (i've had quiet games where i've had systems build 50 orbitals for the sheer fun of it)

And if the worst comes to the worst and an enemy fleet does show up and you're hideously out numbered, at least wipe out their TT's before you go down.
You'll lose the battle, the AI will drop a few torpedoes on your system the next turn but then they'll usually clear off again because they've got no TT's to actually conquer the system with

[dennycrane]

Thanks for the tip.
I'll try that. :-)

[RSE_Chris]

So you mean that I should defend my systems only with ships, right?

But what card-ships can I take best if I just want to leave them there to defend???

Yep, ships only. Heavy cruisers are the main ships for Cards, but again, ships will be easy target practice if they are simple left there to defend and seperated from your main fleet.

My advice is to attack your enemy and push them back, which in turn defends your colonies. "Good offense makes good defence" etc.

[TurboC]

Playing the Cards at Tech 1 can be tough. They don't have many credits and research is slow.

That about sums it up.

If you play like the Feds, you're only setting yourself up for failure.

True, but most of the things you said to do were just like the Feds:

- Build scouts, troop transports, and colony ships. (any race needs those)
- Colonize planets and begin investing in research and intelligence. (same)
- Use your troop transports to extend ship range and the scouts for exploration. (same)
- The faster you progress, the better chance you have of combating your foes. (obv.)

Those are all true for any race, especially Federation, so it gives no help at all to the poor Cardies. This is different though:

- Try to discover minor races to exploit their weakness and win their bonuses, especially races with research bonuses. Remember, the Cardassians live to exploit and conquer.

Really the only difference I see is that you say to conquer in place of winning friends. But even this sucks because of the morale penalty. Yes you can eventually make +2 Re-education centers (though I point out that many other empires have +1 empire-wide which is still MUCH better) but they take a while to research if you are starting at T1. They also take a fair amount of money to buy, which again, you do not have. Now maybe the race you conquer has advanced a little and has some good production available to build the thing - though only at 50-70% normal speed due to the morale problem which you are trying to solve. But if they've advanced to have production, they likely have defenses, then that takes more ships (which you can't afford) etc etc.

So in short, the "advantage" of Cardassians being able to "efficiently conquer" worlds is more or less crap. Sorry.

The "hull ramming" suggestion elsewhere in the thread is interesting though. If you can make effective scout-rammers, that could be useful and be some small shred of advantage for the Cardassians, even early on when you need it most.

The "breaking treaty" suggestion is interesting, but certainly dangerous. Maybe the AI can screw around with YOU, but if you screw around with the AI, you will get attacked. So it only works if you are stronger than your enemy? But then why do you need it? (boggle)

Spying on allies -- can you explain the advantage of this? Morale?

jonboy -- why would you build morale-penalty structures on your home systems? Or anywhere? The advantage can't possibly be better than the morale boost, unless it's some kind of intelligence world? And if you built 2 morale-penalty structures and a Re-education center on a conquered world, as you suggested, it wouldn't "balance out" because you'd still have a net of -1 from the fact that it's conquered ...

I disagree with the "give up on outposts" thing, unless you are playing with random events. Obviously most space monsters eat outposts for lunch, and they are crap in that scenario. So it's really based on if you have random/no random events. Otherwise, outposts are a really cheap way to set up some defense (both in build cost and maintenance cost), which is one thing Cardies desperately need. It's the equivalent of like 3 destroyers anchored at the system. Back them up with a few actual destroyers nearby and they can help enormously.

So in closing -- they're just disadvantaged. Relevant advice - ram things. "And above all, be ruthless!"

[RSE_Dissy]

strategy is different for different tech levels, on tech 1-3, outposts are VERY useful and should be built, i think chris was refering mainly to t4+, where they are just cannon fodder.

there's one key way to overcome a morale penalty in a system, be relentless in your expansion, keep conquering new worlds, the morale boost from these new subjucated worlds will boost your other ones, do this consequetively, then conquer an AI race, (can be done with just scouts vs obs + however many TTs you need!) after conquering AI your empire wide morale will skyrocket.

In terms of you asking about breaking treaty; the morale boost is good yes! and worth it, do it and then re-offer non aggro, if you've spent the first 20 turns purely building fleet (they conquer some minors for morale/make2-3 colonies) you shud be doing ok , and have enuff fleet to afford to scrap one or two ships to pay for bribes for membering an upgraded minor after turn 30-40 ish when they'll update - then your sorted - failing that conquer upgraded minors and if your fleets fly on within 10 turns that old system can be popping out ships like no tomorrow.

spying/sabo doesnt gain you any morale no
if you focus 1% esp 1% int 98% sabo you will be more effective, also target economy - steals you credits and damages enemies infrastructure.

in terms of morale penatly structures on homeworlds, i build jbl is wrong there. however, on blitzkreig multiplayer games where u need ships fast, it could be a possibility, but only morale penalty building i ever build is the kling dilithium mine!

_________

The "breaking treaty" suggestion is interesting, but certainly dangerous. Maybe the AI can screw around with YOU, but if you screw around with the AI, you will get attacked. So it only works if you are stronger than your enemy? But then why do you need it? (boggle)

--

for this one, if your stronger than your enemy they WILL accept a treaty - so offer it! then break it! and declare war and invade them ----- many many morale boosts for your previously conquered minor races:P

hope it helps!


edit; as an addendum, unless your on a large map and in the corner its not wise to just build colonies/tts at start - YOU WILL NEED WARSHIPS! from the very beginning!!

[RSE_Dissy]

hmm tbh the peace treaty breakin only gives you +1 morale points, so pretty tiny really, just looked that up as wasn't sure!

[TurboC]

Yep large map in the corner and peaceful expansion (at first) is the style I like. I've progressed further in my new Cardassian game. Finally overcame the Klingon menace. Oh GOD it felt so good to take Q'onos. Still have a friendship treaty with the Feds even though they hate my guts for all the bombardment of the Klingons. If the Feds decide to attack, I have tons of Cruiser I's ready, which can be upgraded to Cruiser II in one turn whenever I decide to finish that last bit of Weapons tech. The whole "free upgrade" ships thing is cheap, but so powerful.

One thing about the Re-education center -- it is definitely much better later in the game. My comment about them still stands, but is true for the early game, where everything is so hard. Once you get money and resources flowing like they are for me now, it IS nice that I can (and shortly will) invade the Tama system (they are members of the Klingons), plop down a Re-education center for 3000 credits, and it saves me a long time and a lot of investment and hassle of trying to get them to like me enough to switch allegiance. They will still have lower morale than a member system, maybe in the 90's or 100's perhaps, but it is so fast and lets me continue my push forward into other systems. So yeah, conquering + Re-education center is good for higher tech levels and later turns.

Maybe Cardassians would be less disadvantaged at higher starting tech. I almost always play T1 or T2 starting out, and that's why they basically always lose when controlled by the computer.

One last question -- is there any clear explanation of how morale works? I still don't think I understand it. Like, my Palace of Edo just does not seem to be boosting my empire-wide morale at all. Yes it is powered.