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[EuchreJack]

Just read up on the weatherproofing and reliability of Martian and Lunar probes, and you'll see that sand can kill electronics.

[Mkok]

So just won my first maximum difficulty game against nemesis. This game is tooooooo easy. The only difficulty I see is if you start right next to the nemesis who declares on you in 5 turns, or in fighting off large minor invasions at the very beginning. Hell, I didnt even fight a single battle against the nemesis before having been declared victor, I jut declared war, steamrolled my light tanks to take over 3 border cities and immidietly gained victory screen, while the enemy had all of its troops on the other side of the planet. The only battles happened after this for the lulz where I attacked some enemy unit that just changed from armor wearing rifle gunners to heavy-battlesuit laser guys and steamrolled them hard with my light tanks.

Few things I noticed: Air bridges are damn useful, just few ultralight aircraft provided for my troops when rebels cut my rail lines. Air bridges love to scream "you bastards!". Tech level 8.5 AI loves to use firearms, combat armor and howitzers on tnaks while my tech level 7 army was already using battlesuits, laser rifles and beam gun heavy walkers. Airbases are a pain in the ass to built, I just used ultralight aircraft the whole game, although I did have cca 0,8 bar atmosphere while only 0,3g gravity, and after lots of aerodynamic + propeller optimizations all my planes had 20+ range with just ultralight turbo propeller even at max load. Metal is always in shortage. After having like 6+ cities people kept revolting and I had no idea why or where, nor did I even care, was too much micro. If you get event you dont like just ignore it, you save PP, and I didnt notice any downside. Aliens with lots of health bonuses and hard armor are a pain in the ass to kill, aircraft are your best friend against them. Artifacts are the boss, even uncommon sites give you the best artifacts like cloning or gravimetric generators, I researched solars around the time I got hi-tech industry just cause I had so much power from gravimetrics I scavenged from my single uncommon artifact site. Solars >> power plants. Get large enough population and you are swimming in so much cash you dont care about salaries at all.

[Glloyd]

It's funny, I played one game with the give AI more time to think option on, and one with it off, and the one with it on was way more difficult. Part of that was my planet and starting location, I was nowhere near any other factions and didn't find another until like 30 turns in. My second game by turn 30 I'd steamrolled 6 minors already, both through conquest and using the unification strategem, which is very OP. But in combat with the minors in that game, I found their AI so bad and completely unable to respond to any threats. One major was at war with a minor for 30+ turns and hardly touched him. I later steamrolled that minor in one turn. Conpare that to my first game, where I watched one major get steamrolled by two others, then somehow survive and pushing back from a tight circle around his capital. This after he conquered three minors earlier in the game. From that anecdotal experience it seems necessary to tick that AI option in the world generation, because it seems to make a huge difference. It does really increase turn times though, so it is a tradeoff

[Mkok]

I tried playing with that option. After a few turns they took 30+minutes making it totally unplayable (without it they took less then 2 minutes). Unless it gets hella optimized it might just as well not be there.

Also I played one game with it ticked on, and on that game I defeated the nemesis who was my closest neighbor at the very beginning before turn 30 using unifications. And in that game the AI was definitely bad, as they just kept giving me territory by withdrawing their troops every turn. Given that a single militia battalion was able to hold of my entire non-militia army that fully surrounded them for several turns, I suppose that if the AI actually bothered to mount some kind of real defense they might actually have had a chance. Not large as I had 500+ raiders but still better then giving up without putting up fight. The way they were fighting I only had some trouble taking cities, having me to throw few thousands raiders over several turns to overrun them, but as they only had three of them, and the first one was so close to my borders it was practically undefended...

[EuchreJack]

The Majors aren't the real enemies.  Its the Slavers, Spiders, Walker AI faction, and wildlife that are the true obstacles to your dominion of the planet.  You get hit with all that by turn 5, you'll be in a real fight.  It's doable, but it might be the sort of map that you may need to play a second/third/fourth time to win.

It's also the sort of map you should keep your starting save and tell everyone about.

[Glloyd]

Really? I've had slavers a few times in my games and all they ever did was sell me people and help get my democracy score up. Beating them is annoying because you need to eliminate all their armies, but I was able to do it with just militia, so it's not too bad. Militaristic majors on the other hand, those can be a challenge.

[Mkok]

I had a game where I got attacked by raiders, nomads and spiders at the very beginning and had very little trouble holding them back, just recruit few MGs and make a defensive wall until you research light tanks, minors have really weak units and none of them has anything to counter tanks and most of their units are weak vs defensive MGs, at least as far as I can tell as I have yet to encounter religious minors.

I had a game where I started in a mountain valley, surrounded by 3tiles wide mountains on all sides except for one where militaristic nemesis declared on me on turn 5, oh, and the other side of mountains was no-man wasteland for half the map. That could have been a bit of a challenge, yes. Unfortunatelly I did not continue on that save, so I cant tell if a line of MGs would have worked there as well, though I can imagine if they fielded tanks then not. That is why I said the only difficulty in this game is at the beginning, if you make it to like turn 20+ and have more then a single city you might just as well stop playing as you have practically won already.

I hope the AI gets improvements, as this game has a lot of very interesting ideas and I think it would be fun to play vs a opponent who doesnt surrender the moment they see you are weaker then them, and the first 20-30 turns offer almost zero replayability.

[E. Albright]

I've had fauna that laughed off aircraft and took a lot of troops to contain and whittle down. The new fauna patch made those a lot trickier. They're still dumb, but some of them can break containment. They're still more of a logistics problem than a strategy problem, though.

I'd generally say that's my overall experience here: when I've been challenged, it's the logistics of the situation that is daunting, not the cunning AI. I'm currently in a game where I've just killed my second major and have a hostile one on my western flank and a blackmailer theocrat eating the last few minors on my eastern flank where I had most of my forces tied up in a long war making peace (or rather, piece) between the two feuding majors there. I'm actually a bit concerned about my situation, as the eastern major looks pretty advanced and has a decent setup. The western one is fielding multiple corps that I'm currently holding back with two brigades and several bomber wings, but they've been slowed by the mountains so we've only been face-to-face fighting for two or three Terran years and their superior numbers really haven't been brought to bear. The biggest problem I've had this game has been logistic; there's really nasty fauna that takes concerted effort to destroy (though it's getting easier as my tech moved into WWIII territory) who threaten my supply lines, and I'm at the point where I'm really thinking it would make sense to make a second SHQ. My rail backbone is managing to supply both fronts, but troop replacement is slow.

Here's a question: how big are the planets you lot are playing on, and how fast is tech development set to? I tend to go large and slower - that seems to make a huge difference. Majors still like to give ground, but I'm not at risk of winning any time soon - I expect I need to kill off one or both of these majors before that will become a possibility. The idea of winning after conquering my immediate neighbors sounds like something I've only seen messing around on small moons or planetoids.

[Mkok]

I was playing on default size earth-like world with normal speed on max difficulty, 3.0 start minimal. I was afraid that going for larger maps would make turn times unbearable after playing on one with extra long AI turns on. For supply issues, I just keep upgrading my trucks/rails all the time, build a few redundant rails/roads, and air bridges seem to be able to supply quite a decent amount of units in the case my lines are cut even with very small load aircraft (had cca 9 ultralight aircraft and they were enough for my entire army). The only supply issues I had were when I annexed three minors that were too far from my other cities as I had to build a truck/rail station midway while half the militia I "inherited" starved to death, or when my advance forces made it too far too fast into no-mans land. Although upon researching new infantry model I only had cca 60 units to replace, so logistic strain was not even noticeable when I replaced them. and I didnt bother with replacing non-infantry given that even my first tanks were OP for anything they faced (except one fauna, but that one was too much for anything but bombers).

[E. Albright]

I'd definitely recommend larger/slower then. When I took out my first major, my mk II light tanks were reasonably strong, even if all the heavy lifting was done one hex per turn by a GR Monitor Tank. When I slowly ground down the second major, I took heavy casualties in my light armor battalions, my  armor battalion was a bad joke, my two GR heavy tanks quickly became one, and while my GR monitor made it within maybe 2 hexes of their capital, it did not live to see it even with substantial support. Mk III light tanks (polymer armor and some optimization) were reasonable but not dominant, mk II tanks (mixed with mk I & II assault guns, which were superior to the normal tanks owing to ill fortune in the design lab) were strong but not dominant. The capital held out for ~8 turns or so before falling to a massed armor/artillery assault to soften it followed by a human wave attack to overrun what remained. Their AA was too strong for my RW CAS to do much once we pushed the front back near the capital (and FW CAS and strategic bombing was more-or-less ineffectual owing to distances involved, airbase availability, and enemy tech levels).

If you want I can post my current save or a save from any intermediate stage since game start. I'm sure I'm horridly inefficient given that I'm playing on the... 2nd easiest? difficulty level, but unless I'm wildly incompetent (which is possible; I'm a builder, not a fighter) it really sounds the setup I'm running would have been more challenging for you than what you've been doing despite the difficulty setting.

(The fauna is also pretty nasty. That hasn't helped. Nor did the fact that I didn't get reliable power generation until right around when my tanks were pushing towards the first major's capital.)

[Mkok]

If you want I can post my current save or a save from any intermediate stage since game start. I'm sure I'm horridly inefficient given that I'm playing on the... 2nd easiest? difficulty level, but unless I'm wildly incompetent (which is possible; I'm a builder, not a fighter) it really sounds the setup I'm running would have been more challenging for you than what you've been doing despite the difficulty setting.

Might not be that bad of an idea if you could post the initial save At least I will get to see if I simply figured how to play after few games or if I just had good starts

[E. Albright]

Here's a 24h link to the the initial turn and my most recent one: https://a.uguu.se/nMTgBshi.rar

[Mkok]

thx, gonna try it out. The start looks nice.

Just a bit of things I noticed upon quick glance at your save: you seem to have your profile all over the place and your models are spread quite a bit. Also at least the aliens I found should be easy to handle with few precision bombers 

Also how long are your turn times, I tried advancing your turn and it took 12 minutes 

[E. Albright]

I wanna say they're around 5m to process?

Re: fauna, hard attack didn't seem to do a lot to those things, but you may not be looking at what I mean by "those things" when I say "those things". I *might* have killed them off. If so, they'll be a fun surprise for ya on the new game, hehehe.

What do you mean my "models are spread quite a bit"? D'ya mean my units? If so, that's b/c I had just knocked off a major in the NE, and was cleaning up scraps while moving to re-deploy to focus on the active war in the west. While also not entirely trusting the theo-blackmailers in the SE. If you mean my models, I'm just confused.

Profile-wise, the only thing that's ever consistent for me is Democracy through the roof - the rest tends to go wherever and I end up spread about with low-level feats in most areas but few high-level ones. This has always worked pretty well for my playstyle. This game has had lower commerce and gov't than I usually have, though.

[Mkok]

So I think I figured out why turns take so long for me  ... You see, my CPU has this little feature called hyperthreading... meaning I have double the amount of cores but only half CPU power per core... and as this game is mostly single threaded... this effectively means I am playing on cca 1,5 GHz processor 

You seem to have only a single model type with 115+ structural design, I feel that if you were to develop few more designs per models you use a lot you should be able to get better designs. Most notably your infantry is only average, one or two more model lines should get you a line with better structural design easily and after some iterations they should be better then your current ones.