Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Academy » Dirty Tricks
| Dirty Tricks |
Fri, 21 February 2003 17:44  |
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 johng316 |
 | Chief Warrant Officer 3 |
Messages: 177
Registered: November 2002
Location: Indiana, USA | |
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Most of us don't like to publish any of our dirty little tricks that we use to win games, but I thought I would offer this one in the hopes that others might share a few of their own and I could learn something.
First, I'll say, this is NOT cheating. You still pay 100% of the cost of everything you're building....
I call this dirty trick Production Queue Stuffing.
This is useful in a Public Scores game where you're trying to carefully hide how powerful you are, specifically the number of Capital Ships you have. It's micro-management intensive, but the work can pay off bigtime and can hand you a win if you are patient and use this at the right time. Credit where credit is due: An old Stars! buddy of mine, Farrell Hopkins, came up with this one. Here's how it works:
Start building capital ships at a planet. Move the cap ship down in the queue until it is JUST BARELY incomplete in 1 year. Next year, move the incomplete ship down in the queue, and place another one above, also "programmed" to be JUST BARELY incomplete. Do this for about 10 turns, and you'll have 10 ALMOST COMPLETE capital ships in the queue at one planet. When you are ready to give birth, move the ships to the top of the queue, and they will all complete in one turn. Do this with 50 planets, and your Capital Ship count will go up by 500 in a single turn. This can very quickly shift the balance of power in any game.
This requires incredible patience and willingness to suffer lots of micromanagement. To achieve success, you must manipulate your queue so that there are partially complete ships every turn. Put minelayers ahead, chaff ahead, cruisers ahead, even factories, mines, and defenses ahead of your cap ships. The key is to appear weaker than you actually are (and there are sometimes good diplomatic reasons to do this). Limited usefulness, but boy is it fun to pull this off. 
Having fun,
John G
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| Re: Dirty Tricks |
Fri, 21 February 2003 18:33  |
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| yucaf |
 | Master Chief Petty Officer |
Messages: 100
Registered: December 2002
Location: India | |
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Hello,
You can do many tricks with public scores, another one is to load pop on each planet every turn at way point 1 so you actually show less ressources than you have (of course you deposit your pop at the beginning of the turn [WP zero] to get the benefit of it  )
However, few intermediate of adanced players would agree on playing in a public score game, first because it takes out a lot of fun out of the game (guessing and spying is great!), and second precisely because you can do those tricks so they are of little interest anyway... PPS are good for beginners however, while you get used to the game and playing against human opponents.
A thing I want to mention as well on your queueing trick is that it would not go unnoticed by experienced players, because if you are showing no increase in techs nor ships for 10 years and they can have a very good estimate of your ressources (both public scores and scanning), they will guess what you are doing.
Worse than that: they can try to be even nastier and prepare a sneak attack on your planets: it takes few suicide ships to blow up a starbase. When your starbase goes, all your ships in queue as well, and the cost in ressources, minerals etc. is definitively lost. So your trick is fine, as long as you protect your space very carefully otherwise you are in great danger.
It is also quite difficult to maintain most of your planets at levels of ressources where they will not build at least a BB every turn (unless -f race) you would probably lose more ressources by lifting the pop in excess during 10 years than just unleash your power and show your intentions...
Still a fine trick I used to a lesser level (not waiting for 10 years, only accumulating for a couple of them, so I have some good fleets to start with and not lonely ships at my borders), and as you say, a MM hell 
FWIW,
YucaF
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| Re: Dirty Tricks |
Fri, 21 February 2003 19:04 |
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| johng316 |
| Chief Warrant Officer 3 |
Messages: 177
Registered: November 2002
Location: Indiana, USA | |
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Good points.
Yes, I have heard about the pop manipulation thing, and I think most consider that to be cheating in a PS game. I wouldn't condone that.
I guess I have to disagree that a PS game is not interesting to advanced players. While PS games do have an impact on the guessing game, they also serve to hold the run-away leader in check. Advanced players know this, and so they have to work harder diplomatically to win in a PS game. I find this to be very stimulating, interesting, and challenging. Try playing a PS game with advanced players sometime... you might change your mind. 
Try this with Queue stuffing: If you can build 3.75 BB's per turn, build the three, and move the .75 to the bottom of the queue. Save it for later. This is harder to detect, and you have an undetectable reserve fleet that can be called out of mothballs fairly quickly.
Not always useful, but occasionally so.
Any other DIRTY TRICKS out there?
John G
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| Re: Dirty Tricks |
Sat, 22 February 2003 11:22 |
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| yucaf |
| Master Chief Petty Officer |
Messages: 100
Registered: December 2002
Location: India | |
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| BlueTurbit wrote on Sat, 22 February 2003 03:08 |
False public player scores would be considered by many to be a cheat rather than a trick, unless specifically permitted by the game host. Therefore it is listed along with the other known cheats/bugs in Stars FAQ.
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Therefore you are in a very dangerous area... What is the limit of cheating. If I unload pop from a planet in prevision for an invasion of because I want to stimulate growth, etc. I can be accused of cheating etc. Of course some cases are clearly just that, for example when you have 2 freighters going repeatedly from one planet to another on each planet, there is no doubt.
In any case, I prefer to avoid this kind of problem by just playing with non public scores. If others want to know the state of my empire and my army, they will have to find out.
I am playing PPS in a game with good players and no diplomacy, and PPS has been a hurdle more than a gift. In fact, I am clearly winning on the score board now but this doesn't seem to bother the #2 and #3 who are fighting each other, letting me get the next generation of techs while I accumulate the minerals to build the ultimate army... In my experience at least, being #1 is not a garantee that other players will gang on you. Even with diplomacy, this is sometime difficult to achieve. Lesser races have sometime difficulties to admit that they should sacrifice and disappear from the map in the intent to destabilize the leader, they prefer to survive longer 
So about PPS, I keep my POW: better without it.
Now here is another dirty trick that worked very well in this game: at one point I had my main army on a border planet, not yet ready to attack. The ennemy army was gathering and basically in the north there were most of his DN's and in the south some DN's and a whole bunch of chaff (about 2000).
I sent a part of my army right into the border zone. The quantity of ships was appealing because there weren't enough to resist the assault of the whole ennemy army. It was very attractive to him, because he had the opportunity to destroy half my army and gain the upper hand.
However, I had positionned my army at distance that, when retreating, I would be at 102 l.y. from his bunch of DN's and only 80 a.l. of his bunch of chaff.
Next year I retreat and bingo! He attacked my fleet with both of his fleets. The "chaffy" one got to it because it was in range, but the DN's one got short by 2 l.y. and never made it to the fighting site. I destroyed all his chaff and some DN's while his main army was sitting alone in space. Now I had clearly a better army to assault him.
All this was possible because we both have NAS and only I was knowing where were his fleets (by sending chaff every turn)
Playing with the ennemy is a fun part of Stars! Do an apparent mistake, create situations where it seems that the ennemy can have significant advantage and in fact it's a trap. Information is key in this kind of situation, so you better know what is on the other side of the fence or could be the one tricked 
FWIW,
YucaF
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| Re: Dirty Tricks |
Sat, 22 February 2003 11:24 |
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| BlueTurbit |
 | Lt. Commander
RIP
BlueTurbit died Oct. 20, 2011 |
Messages: 835
Registered: October 2002
Location: Heart of Texas | |
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| johng316 wrote on Fri, 21 February 2003 18:04 |
I guess I have to disagree that a PS game is not interesting to advanced players. While PS games do have an impact on the guessing game, they also serve to hold the run-away leader in check
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And the counterpoint would be that all the weaker players are subject to earlier elimination as their lack of resources and technology, etc. is posted for the stronger to see. And to compound this, the stronger players get stronger even faster by easy expansion into these weak areas. It is much more difficult to plan for the unknown than to deal with the obvious.
I suppose in an advanced game this may have different effect as there would be closer balance between players. But in a mixed skill game the newer often weaker players would likely be more subject to early defeat than without PPS.
BlueTurbit Country/RockReport message to a moderator
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| Re: Dirty Tricks |
Tue, 25 February 2003 21:13 |
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| johng316 |
| Chief Warrant Officer 3 |
Messages: 177
Registered: November 2002
Location: Indiana, USA | |
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| Quote: |
I am playing PPS in a game with good players and no diplomacy, and PPS has been a hurdle more than a gift. In fact, I am clearly winning on the score board now but this doesn't seem to bother the #2 and #3 who are fighting each other, letting me get the next generation of techs while I accumulate the minerals to build the ultimate army... In my experience at least, being #1 is not a garantee that other players will gang on you. Even with diplomacy, this is sometime difficult to achieve. Lesser races have sometime difficulties to admit that they should sacrifice and disappear from the map in the intent to destabilize the leader, they prefer to survive longer
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Respectfully, this would suggest to me that you are not in fact opposed by good players, but with fools who don't recognize the danger you present. Expert players would lay aside their differences and be all over you if what you describe is accurate. Expert players are in the game to win and will not cut off their nose to spite their face. The Expert player will exploit PS for fantastic propaganda gains. For this reason, I maintain my (off-topic) POV that PS games are MUCH harder to win in an expert game (with genuine expert players), and thus more satisfying in the end. Of course, this remains my simple opinion. 
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So about PPS, I keep my POW: better without it.
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To each his own, I guess. I still would encourage you to try building an expert-level game (hand-pick your players) around PS and see how you like it.
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Now here is another dirty trick that worked very well in this game:
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 This is awesome! An excellent slap. It takes a very dilligent and observant player to spot this kind of opportunity... Bravo!
John G
All Your Base Are Belong To Us.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Dirty Tricks |
Wed, 26 February 2003 23:06 |
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| yucaf |
| Master Chief Petty Officer |
Messages: 100
Registered: December 2002
Location: India | |
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| johng316 wrote on Tue, 25 February 2003 21:13 |
Respectfully, this would suggest to me that you are not in fact opposed by good players, but with fools who don't recognize the danger you present. Expert players would lay aside their differences and be all over you if what you describe is accurate. Expert players are in the game to win and will not cut off their nose to spite their face. The Expert player will exploit PS for fantastic propaganda gains. For this reason, I maintain my (off-topic) POV that PS games are MUCH harder to win in an expert game (with genuine expert players), and thus more satisfying in the end. Of course, this remains my simple opinion.
John G
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You are absolutely right about the "no expert" - they are good and intelligent players however, not beginners (I know them), and I think they are perfectly aware I am winning (given the bombs falling on their border worlds and their failing ressource curves) However, the mind is working weirdly sometime. It seems they got used to fight together and can't get along against me 
BTW, this is a "no diplomacy / no communication" game so yes, of course in a public score expert game I would be the first one to point out who is winning and I would be whinning myself to ensure that everybody attacks him
I agree with you that it is much more difficult to win in a PPS game with only experts, but still I would not have fun I guess. It's very personel, but loosing because I had a better start is something I can't seem to accept well Anyway I am about to abandon Stars  for real life reason (future dad  ) so I guess it's too late to try it now. Thanks for the advice anyway.
Take care,
YucaF
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| Re: Dirty Tricks |
Thu, 27 February 2003 00:36 |
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| EDog |
 | Lt. Junior Grade |
Messages: 417
Registered: November 2002
Location: Denver, Colorado, USA | |
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| zoid wrote on Wed, 26 February 2003 22:20 |
| yucaf wrote on Wed, 26 February 2003 20:06 |
Anyway I am about to abandon Stars for real life reason (future dad ) so I guess it's too late to try it now.
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Bah, you don't even have breasts - THE KID IS GONNA WANT HIS MOM! C'mon, you can still play Stars! until he's old enough to play catch.
BTW, congratulations.
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Trust me on this. I've been playing Stars all the way through babies one and two (and currently while number three is in the oven...). You gotta do something when the babies are awake in the middle of the night. Believe it or not, sometimes your wife will take care of them and leave you to your own devices because she wants some bonding time. And you'll find that it's easy to tuck a bottle into the young'un's when he or she is in your lap while you one-hand your production queues.
If all else fails, try to limit yourself in the number of games you play. I try to keep no more than three games at any given time - one beginning, one in the mid-game, and one end-game (assuming I make it that far - I've been starting lots of new games recently...I must be sucking worse than usual!).
Congratulations from another dad-to-be!
EDog
http://ianthealy.com
Born, grew up, became an adventurer
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Re: Dirty Tricks
I do FREESTYLE math.
