Introduction : Expert Advice
NAME
Expert - Advice to expert Empire players
Level: Expert
Defense Against Nuclear Attacks
Through the Denial of Information
by Tom Tedrick
A very good defense against nukes is to make it as difficult as possible for
other players to find out where your country is, and thus to make maps of it.
Here are some simple steps that you can follow:
1) Shoot down all planes that fly over your airspace. It helps to have
numerous airfields, say one airfield for every 25 sectors or so. Every
airfield should be within interception distance of several other air-
fields, so that it is more difficult for an enemy to destroy or capture
it. If an airfield is detected and nuked, you still have backup air-
fields. Every important sector should be within interception distance of
several airfields.
2) Seal off all entrances to your inland seas by building bridges and laying
mines (so no enemy ships can penetrate the area for mapping purposes).
3) Sink all surface vessels and submarines near your coastline. Have large
fleets of destroyers posted around exposed coastal areas covering all sea
sectors where enemy subs might try to sneak in for mapping purposes.
Usually two fleets of 30 destroyers each are enough. Navigate the whole
fleet one sector, stop and look for subs, navigate one more sector, stop
and look for subs, and so on, until the fleet has made a circle and is
back in its starting position. Sink any subs you find, of course.
There is a maximum number of around 30 ships that can be in a fleet if
you want to maneuver the whole fleet by fleet name (see "info fleetadd").
4) Establish alliances under the condition that secrecy is maintained with
respect to map information. Thus other allied countries can serve as a
buffer zone against enemy countries. Many players are willing to be good
allies.
5) Destroy or capture nearby radar stations.
6) Destroy or capture enemy air bases within range of your country. Until
enemy technology gets high enough to launch against any target world-
wide, they will often try to get someone to let them have an airbase hid-
den near your country and launch nuclear strikes from there. I've always
been able to find these if I worked at it.
7) Use psychological warfare. Nukers get tired of nuking you if it seems to
have no effect. For example, have numerous false capitals, so that when,
after great efforts, they manage to find what they think is your capital,
and nuke it, only to discover that it was a fake, they will get discour-
aged. These fake capitals are also very useful as backups in case your
real capital is discovered and destroyed.
When an enemy gets close to doing real harm, a counterattack can often
divert attention away from the current attack. Psychologically, attack-
ers seem to underestimate the harm they are doing to you if you don't
give out any information about how you are being affected, and they seem
to overestimate the danger to themselves from your counterattack.
Ship Networks and the Art of
Transferring Supplies
by Tom Tedrick
Build large quantities of ships. When they're 100% efficient, load them with
military and food (and civilians) if possible. Load guns and shells if you
have them, but since they tend to be scarce, only a few ships will have them.
Navigate them one by one as far as they will go. Leave only one ship in each
sector (this makes it difficult for an enemy to sink very many of them, due to
mobility restrictions and the problem of locating and identifying them one by
one). On your maps, mark the ship number in the appropriate sector. Each sea
sector thus has at most one ship number.
Unless there is something in particular you want to do with a particular ship,
leave it sitting in its sector indefinitely.
As you build more and more ships, move them out one by one. If you leave ship
X in a sector that already contains ship Y, ship Y should have full mobility
by then. Navigate ship Y as far as it will go, then leave it sitting until a
new ship comes along.
Every ship in the network is now likely to be within range of some other ships
in the network. If a ship requires any supplies, you can load them on a ship
in a harbor, navigate it out, transfer the cargo via tend, navigate the tended
ship, transfer its cargo, and so on, until you reach the any ship in the net-
work. If you need military for assaulting or boarding, guns and shells for
firing, torpedoing or laying mines, or if you simply want to move stuff into a
distant harbor, you can do it using several tend and navigate operations.
This has been particularly useful for sinking subs. I don't have enough guns
and shells to keep all of my 100 or more destroyers fully armed, but when one
of the unarmed destroyers spots a sub, I can arrange to transfer guns and
shells to it from a loaded ship (or from a harbor).
It's a very simple system from the player's standpoint, because all the player
has to do is build the ship, navigate it, mark its number on the map, and for-
get about it until a use for it arises. As more ships are built, the network
automatically expands without requiring any planning. You don't have to keep
anything in memory, except the ship number on your map. If any enemy surface
ship gets trapped in the network, it's quite likely you can capture it, even
if all you have is cargo ships (battleships, landing craft, and carriers could
take some work though). If an enemy sub is spotted by your destroyers, you
can almost always sink it. If a convenient target for an assault appears, you
can get the necessary military there.
Some Tricks to Use When Fighting
by Various People
(Mostly by Tom)
The trick for boarding destroyers: you need a bunch of cargo ships, both to
make several boarding attempts and to tend military. When you try to board a
ship, both the attacker and defender lose the same amount of mobility. First
you have to get the destroyer's mobility to be negative. Then you just keep
trying to board it from one ship after another until you win. That's where my
ship network method comes in handy. I usually have swarms of ships I can sur-
round enemy ships with.
If I have planes, my normal method is to take a sector I can see, put enough
military to hold it, designate it "e" if it has lots of food, or maybe some-
thing else if there is a reason. Then get information about the adjacent sec-
tors and take the most promising one. Without planes it's more of a struggle.
Anyway, I kind of zig-zag into the country taking the most interesting
sectors, ignoring the others. This really seems to freak people out, when an
enemy takes a path right through the heartland.
I would use planes (so having numerous airports each with a fair supply of
fighters, spread around your country, would be the best countermeasure), ships
(having forts loaded with guns and shells covering all coastlines helps a lot;
also having destroyers and subs spread around your coastal waters in order to
spot and counterattack enemy ships, also have bombers to bomb enemy ships, and
radar stations to spot them is useful).
I would invade by land, firing from forts, (mainly you need to counterattack
actively when the enemy takes any sectors in your area, also forts with guns
and shells help a lot). I would capture islands and build bridges to get into
your country (so watch all offshore islands with bridge span range).
Have a lot of shells in warehouses ready to be moved to the front (you can
move four for no mobility cost).
Bombing enemy ships spotted by radar seems to work pretty well for the most
part. If he has an aircraft carrier you can torpedo it.
You never know exactly what may happen, sometimes you get lucky when you think
it's hopeless. Even if a plan has only a small chance of working, sometimes
it's worth a try, especially if the enemy has to actively do something to stop
it.
You should always have at least two capitals sectors, in case you lose one.
Just a tip on empire tactics: mobility is the key to dealing with many empire
problems. Its often the bottleneck which interferes with various things, and
the decisive advantage that gives victory to the attacker.
SEE ALSO
Overview, Novice, Hints, Introduction