Crazy Stratagey Monkey

Strategies in Sword of the Stars depend greatly on the races you and your enemy are playing and the tactics they utilize. Here I will try to list the possible situations.

Human vs. Human- Blitzkreig is really the best option here. You both have a hard time defending because of the way node lines link together, and with late-game speed you’ll both want to try to attack your enemies rear lines.

Human vs. Hiver- Hiver has a hard battle here- Humans can attack from out of Deepscan(DS) range in one turn if they get N-Pathing. Hiver might be able to to try and get them early-game, but late game spells doom for a hiver player.

Human vs. Tarka- Not an advantage to be had here to a great extent. Human-Tarka is essentially a slugging match to see who dies first. Human have slightly better tech chances, but tark have better armor and more heavily armed ships.

Human vs. Liir- This is a tricky one. Liir will be able to outtech the humans under most conditions, but will proably have less of an economy. Less a slugfest and more of a techfest.

Human vs. Zuul- Kill the roo’s, kill them quickly. Cruiser-era zuul will be a very big problem for you.

Human vs. Morri- Like the Liir, only they will outgun you late game, so don’t let them get there.

Hiver vs. Hiver- You won’t meet each other until Fusion-era unless playing a very small map, and there will be a territory grab when you do. Whoever gets the most territory will proably take the other out in a long, slow, war of attrition.

Hiver vs. Tarka- Bad matchup for the bugs, just bad. The only thing worse that Tarks is to be facing Humans, and both will prove a severe drain on your gate network, sometimes attacking from out of DS range. Try to time your attacks on two places at once so they can’t reinforce heavily. If it gets to AM and you don’t have a big advantage and the potential for Farcasters, expect to have a really hard time.

Hiver vs. Liir- Not bad here, liirships take forever to get places, and are generally weak early-game, where you have your biggest advantage from gates. If you end up in late game, try to go for the liir economy to stop them from getting all the high-tech toys they are famous for. AP Drivers are a good bet too, they’ll bounce the liir around alot.

Hiver vs. Zuul- See Human vs. Zuul.

Hiver vs. Morri- Once again, ballistics are your friend. Morri have abysmal chances at the armor tree, and their ships are paper thin. Late game is more even, but if you can get Thumpers or Accelerator Amplification, they’re in for it.

Tarka vs. Tarka- They can kill you, you can kill them. Who dies first?

Tarka vs. Liir- mmmmm. Kill them quickly? Kill them late-game? There are options here, but really it’s all up to the techs that the tarks roll. If they’re lucky, they can wait till late game when they have a speed advantage. Otherwise it would be best to get the fish early.

Tarka vs. Zuul- See Human vs. Zuul

Tarka vs. Morri- Hammer them, hammer them hard. If you can break the morrigi econ before they hit Dread’s, they are in a bad way.

Liir vs. Anything- Tech, Tech, Tech. You have weak ships, but if you can get shields and other tech toys, they will be swept away.

Zuul- Sry, never played zuul

Morri vs. Anything- See Liir, only also use trade routes and xenotech to power you to superior dreads.

Sword of the stars 2 has been announced by Kerberos. The known  information about the game includes:

-It will be published by Paradox Interactive

-All of the six races will return, along with an seventh race, the malicious Sull’Ka referenced by the liir and the zuul.

-The destroyer class is being phased out, and will only appear as a battle rider configuration, reminicient of the Tarka’s Hunter Cruisers.

-Ships are set to engage each other at significantly longer ranges, with the new era of combat referred to as the difference between WWI battleships and WWII carriers.

-We get to learn about the history of some of the races in more detail, particularly the Tarka’s ” Silver Empire,” which collapsed hundreds of years ago for unknown reasons.

-Bigger ship class, termed Leviathan. Also, Liir and Human ship designs have apparently received a significant upgrade, the new pics looking radically different than their previous look.

-The fourth power tech is either going to be nonexistent, or power techs will be supplemented/replaced with energy use technologies.

-[Edit: SOTS 2: Lords of Winter is scheduled for a early 2011 release.]

-Various other things.

General Overview. SOTS is a 4X game published by Lighthouse Entertainment and designed by Kerberos Productions. The gameplay mostly involves managing your space empire against a number of opponents, and does not focus on individual colony managment. Battles between your forces are conducted on a 3D map, however you can only order your ships to move on two of the dimensions. The main gameplay is in the design of your ships. Weapons are put into banks of turrets, and the weapons are chosen from whichever techs you currently have. Each ship consists of three sections, command, misson, and engine. Your options for design are mainly limited by what the random tech tree grants you, with major implications.

Gameplay. 9.5/10 Innovative, with many options and possibilities. Only downside is that it can eat time like a hungry hog.

Graphics. 8/10 Not Fancy, but will not crush your computer with the weight of a thousand suns.

Execution. 7/10 Amazing AI players, but is prone to crashing on rare occasions.(at least w/o newest patch. Which is kinda hard to find)

Learning Curve. 2.5/10 WAAAYYY,  WAAAYYY steep for beginners!!! If you’ve played 4X before, it will not be too hard, but if your beginning, you should proably try an easier game first.

Interface. 8.5/10 Most major options are not on your main screen, but in seperate screens you can call up with hotkeys, like homeworld. When you select something( a planet) it will display many relevent stats without using too much space. Unfortunately, it is not intutitive, and like the rest of the game, will require you to spend alot of time figuring it out. Patches are praticularly important with relation to this.

Replayability. 8/10 Techs are not extremely varied, but the multiple levels of each tech and random tech tree means that you will always be trying to get the next tech in such-and-such tree b/c you’ve seen it once and you want it again.

Overall 7.5/10(Casual) 9/10(Niche) It’s learning curve is too steep for casual play, but if you can overcome that, you can have years and years of fun with this game.