Rushing an increadible AI...

Funny, another Maso rush thread just appeared in Strat forum too.

Yes, it does work on majors and esp well on minors. It has been said that different AI excel differently - ie some are better at defending but others aren't. It would be good to keep track of those AI who do both.

Can you share which AI decided to die to you in a blaze of glory?

Wow I found it hard to rush anything past biginner. Congrats!

Tiny/rare is easy, even on maso, since all you have to do is take out one system in one turn and then you don't have to deal with their fleet at all. You can eat up almost every star system in the galaxy that way, one system at a time.

You don't even really have to go out of your way to rush, since the AI defends its homeworld inadequately anyway.
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It were the Arceans who decided to die to me in a blaze of own stupidness.

@Astax: It would've been hard if they had not taken all their transports filled with most of their population out of their orbit before building something with better defensive capabilities.

@vincible: I think it works as long as you are the one to declare war. When they declare war, they are usually prepared well enough and will shoot down everything you send towards their direction.

I finally was able to pull off the rush everyone on all 5 incredible Maso tiny/abundant. Drengins were first and the early leader with two systems. Then the Arcaens who had about 5000 pop in their system. The Arcaens loaded up their transports and pulled out of orbit making it easy on me. I was also able to knock out the Altarians before I got to frigates. Frigate rush knocked out the Torians and put the Yor down to one system and no military. One thing I never noticed before was that when you kill colony ships and transports in orbit, it kills some of the pop. Never paid any attention to that before and I've played quite a few games. You can usually get away with sending 200-500 troops in a transport. My earlier mistakes were sending 1000 and I quickly got low on pop after rushing the first 1-2.



~SDC~

Seems like the Arceans are wired up to be quick with following up with transports during war but that comes with the downside of a much weaker defense.

I'm having difficulties rushing AIs who pick War Party and +20hp racial picks. Their defenders have 43hp and hard to break down. Seen it twice recently now.

This seems as good a place as I can think to post this wacky stuff. . .

I was playing a middle sized map on 'tough' and had the distinction of having two of the Minors in my immediate area which was great! A rather diobolical mood came over me and I decided to tech up to transports and rush them both! After the unsavory backstabbing (I was in a fendish mood) the game that followed was one of the most bizzar I ever played.

The Dregen (Lawful Good) under no apparent attack seemed to just give up and serendered to me?
The Arceans (set to Chaotic Good) went on a totally unrealistic and deluded crusade to destroy me (they had no economy, one system and were on the other side of the map?)
The Altarians (Chaotic Evil) kept giving me geneous gifts for no obvious reason.
The Yor (Neutral) just curled up and died (didn't seem to do anything)
and the Trojans (Chaotic Good) just kept giving me free ships to help destroy the Arceans which I couldn't use anyway because of range limits.

In the end I allied with the Trojans for an easy win with the whole game taking no more than an hour for
11 000 pts?

Crazy huh?

I was too ashamed to sumbit it (my alignment was very 'naughty') but I was astounded at the apparent reliance of some of the races on the early game dynamics including the minors?

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Nothing weird here.