moore@tc.fluke.COM (Matt Moore) (06/21/91)
The "ingeneous" computer players are not very ingeneous at all when it comes to defensive strategy. Whenever I threaten them enough, they stop attacking and start building satellites and ships at all of their worlds at once. Its getting to be pretty routine; I assemble a fleet of 50 ships or so and hop around, destroying one world after another, defeating their forces in detail. Its not uncommon for me to destroy 200 to 300 alien units with one 50-ship fleet (plus a ship or two per turn production) because the aliens are encountered in 20-30 unit chunks which I destroy with minimal losses. There is an ancient military aphorism: "He who defends everything, defends nothing". Trying to defend every world just makes them all weak, allowing me to conquor them one at a time. A much better strategy would be to defend one or two worlds with hundreds of satellites, leaving the rest naked, and have a single, very strong mobile force to go around reclaiming lost territory and raiding the enemy. The idea would be to concentrate as much force as possible in one fleet and aim for a winner-take-all battle with the enemy's massed fleet. Also, I don't like the idea of letting a battle's winner get scrap metal from the loosing fleet. Shortage of metal is one of the biggest strategic constraints in the game, and it tends to penalize players who are overly aggressive and get into too many wars. Letting the winner scrap the looser biases the game in favor of aggressive players - it makes war pay too well. One of the attractions of Spaceward Ho is that it supports different strategies, such as peaceful expansion - I don't think it would be a good idea to bias it too far towards a single strategy. Matt Moore