edit: this is for MOO2

Settings: Small Galaxy, Average tech, v1.5 (or 1.3), Impossible AI
Enough negative picks to get 10 extra points. I like feudal, -1 research, -1 spying.
+25 ship defense, +50 ship attack, large rich homeworld, telepathic, warlord

As soon as the game starts, transfer all scientists to production and start up a cruiser. No research at all, and no buildings either, this is all at war.
Cruiser design: 3 heavy mount lasers, 2 sets of 6 Point Defense lasers (for some reason spreading them out makes them less buggy)

This thing WRECKS any early game defenses. You just sit there at long range plinking away with your heavy mount lasers. Thanks to all the attack and defense bonuses, you can hit them but they can't hit you. Any missiles they fire will get gunned down by the PD lasers. I find that I do have to rotate them each turn to make sure the missiles move and don't double up, but as long as you stay patient and do that, you can take down any star base or early ships with ease. Then Mind Control and bam, instant win.

Thanks to feudal and going all-in on production, you can build one of these cruisers in about 17 turns. I know there's other builds that can get it done slightly faster, but none that completely dominate early warfare like this can. If you get lucky you might get a ship leader and gain even more bonuses. I've found I can usually conquer the entire galaxy before anyone has time to build a serious defense. And even if they do, it's easy enough to keep building more warships or refit them with stolen tech.

Anyone else try this? I've always heard that "early game is about missiles" or "ship attack/ship defense picks are terrible value." But I feel like this build is unstoppable, unless you get stuck out of range and with nowhere to place an outpost. In my most recent game, I won in 46 turns without breaking a sweat. That's faster than most races will even have a serious warship built.

I found a variant that works even better: cybernetic.

Swap out cybernetic for warlord. You don't need warlord anyway, its experience bonus is minimal and you won't be building many ships. Cybernetic speeds up the early construction a little, but more importantly, the repair bonus is huge in these small early beam fights. It let me win a fight against a race I'd found later who had already teched up to fusion beams with an attack bonus, who were consistently doing a little bit of damage each turn. It also let's you survive if you mess up and let a few missiles through.

Ran into a problem with this strategy: missile bases.

USUALLY I can either hit them before they build a missile base, or they just don't get the tech, but it's a big problem if they do build one. Missile bases fire 14 missile per turn, which is more than my cruiser can handle with its 12 PD lasers. I would need at least 28 to shoot down 14 missiles, and things get worse if they get ARM armored missiles or merculite missiles.

I was able to beat a missile base by adding some extra destroyers armed with nothing but PD to provide extra anti-missile support, but that slowed things down significantly and required a lot of tedious micro for the battle itself. I could also use a battleship instead of a cruiser, or add some missile ships, but those also delay things. I tried sabotaging with spies but never got it to work. Still pondering how best to deal with this. Maybe just avoid missile bases until last, and come in with overwhelming firepower built from all the other planets conquered.

I had a period when I dabbled in speedy games so find these interesting. Keep writing if you like as I like reading. I found that I needed a bit of luck to win as a runaway race furthest from you is bad news.

Thanks for the encouragement!

I just had a really tough test of this strategy. I was in the corner, and all the stars were spread far apart for some reason, so I had to build a lot of outpost ships to get anywhere. By the time I reached the klackons, they had missile bases and were a bit of a runaway like you mentioned, so that was a big problem.

I was also trying something different. Instead of Warlord and Telepathic, I went for Ship Offense +50, Ship Defense +50, Ground Combat +20, and Charismatic. Not really the most effective build, but I wanted to try pushing it just as far as I could.

Charismatic actually worked out well. Quite early I got a megawealth colony leader and a ship leader with helmsman, ordnance, and navigator, so that was a nice bonus to my ships. Unfortunately, he died when an enemy ship self-destructed, but I got some other leaders to make up for it.

Ground combat is definitely no replacement for telepathic. You have to build transports, you can still lose the fight from random chance, the enemy can revolt to retake the planet, and it takes forever to assimilate colonists. What a slog. On the plus side, I *did* get a couple of chances to capture enemy ships, in some very exciting battles.

I admit I did some save scumming to win, but it was an interesting puzzle to figure out how to win with my racial bonuses against much more technologically advanced ships. Eventually I ended up with a motley fleet made up of my own laser battleships, two silicoid battleships with anti-missile rockets, and 1 klackon sihip with shields and fusion beams. With careful micro, that was enough to shoot down enemy missiles, even merculite missiles, while my ship defense and cybernetic healing kept me mostly safe from beams. Defiitely not the best build, but it was a fun game.

When I use this strat, I spend a lot of time playing missile defense with PD weapons. I've noticed that they seem to be bugged sometimes. Missiles are coming in, I've still got PD guns left to fire, I expect them to fire automatically, but they just... don't. And it's not because I'm facing the wrong way or something. It seems to happen most when it's the last volley missiles from a starbase and it's out of ammo. All the other volleys get shot down, but that last one kills me because the PD guns don't fire on it.

Anyone else notice this?