Well as it is, I am struggling to win a normal AI. Hard to believe but true, so far I have won about 4 games out of around 10. It is faster in building up, and sneaky in its way of play. One game it built a nuke and wiped me out, another time it built a large number of air units consisting mostly bombers.... The problem probably came from not being able to play for most of the building of the game. For both games I was not ready for such an attack, it building a nuke launcher shocked me. I watched quite a few of brianpurkiss videos, trying to find ways to get a better hold, and new ways to defend against its attacks. Two or so videos showed a good use of the walls, so I tried using them, surrounded an metal extractors with air and ground defence weapons. But the AI were still killing me anyway, destroying the objects that I thought the walls would protect.
1) Dox 2) no walls (at least not too many; they contribute to turtling more) -> always expand 3) (early) scouting and rushing are your friends
Forget walls and all that. First focus on economy, you are doing something wrong if normal AI is faster than you. Probably you are low on energy, or do not expand to new mexes fast. Start with building vehicle factory, queue 10 vehicle fabricators, set commander to help factory. First fabber goes for making powerplants (at least 16), then 1 to metal, repeat until you have like 3 and 3 in power and metal, then rest of fabbers to powerplants. You should have 7 making power and 3 making metal. Then build few units to defend, like 5 tanks. Few scouts next. And group of fabbers to make turrets. At this point you have 3 ways: turtle your base with turrets, go for T2, or mass produce army of tanks. Or just get all your fabbers and attack AI with commander, then retreat when comm is damaged, fix it and repeat. Ruin AI's factories, if you hit it hard its commander will move somewhere and start fresh. Or on multiplanet go for orbital take over other planets with t1 factory and fighters to defend from airtransports. Dox, dox everywhere.
Sounds to me like you do not build nearly enough units. I am going to assume you understand the mechanics of the game so I will simply give you some broad goals: - Try to have your commander walk as little as possible. A lot of times I will see newbs send their commander to go build a metal extracter wayyyyyy over there. - Build lots and lots of t1 factories. 20 factories is normal. - only build at most ten fabbers - use them to expand for metal or building pgens (the more fabbers you have, the more pgens you must build) - build an air factory pretty early on and build humming birds. Us them to defend from the AI's air but also to scout the AI to see what they are doing. If they start going t2 you have to do the same etc.
Also, very important: When you lose, use the ChronoCam to rewind and see what the AI is doing better than you. In the spectator mode, you can see your economy as well as that of the enemy and have full vision of everything, so that should help you figure out how the AI is beating you.
I would recommend watching more videos and replays, from good players. You say you've watched some of @brianpurkiss' videos, so here's some more! Elodea's 'Cookie Cutter Build': Two videos I have recorded myself. I'm not as good as elodea (i.e. i'm not as good as the current King of the Planet, nobody is!), but if you are struggling with the Normal AI at the moment, I'd like to think that watching me play would be beneficial for you: 1v1 game on 'Clarke', a single large planet. 32 player free-for-all on a huge moon http://www.youtube.com/user/ZaphodX1/videos http://www.youtube.com/user/MEGAMarshallXP/videos @ZaphodX and @wpmarshall are the two most prolific and prominent casters in the PA community right now. I started watching ZaphodX's videos back when I first downloaded the PA alpha, and found them very useful for learning build orders etc. Check them out! No doubt I've missed a few, but that's three direct links to videos that will hopefully help you and anyone else trying to learn the game right now, plus links the hundreds of videos that ZaphodX and wpmarshall have recorded. Lastly, the replays section from the PA main menu is a great way to learn as well, you can easily rewind, and look at the eco and army statistics using the spectator UI menu. Look at the 'most viewed' list, and you'll see replays from some of the best players. Look at http://ladder.pastats.tk/uberskill/ to see which players are ranked highly Always happy to teach if I've got time too, as are some of the other people in the community. Hang out in IRC, #planetaryannihilation on irc.esper.net, I'm always there, as are lots of modders and good players RTS is a tricky genre and the streaming economy system is quite unique.. PA is quite hard to learn, and it doesn't help that it doesn't have a proper tutorial (yet?). But plenty of resources out there to learn from, and people who are happy to help/teach Don't forget to have fun!
This is the best advice. Watch the replay, keep an eye on your economy: Are you throwing away Metal? Do you have enough energy? Is my commander building Factories? How many Fabricators do I have building Metal Extractors? Were some of them maybe killed, stalling my expansion? Et cetera. Then, look up a replay of some of the better players, like elodea, to see what they are doing differently. Start a game without AI opponent (set it resource modifier to x0.0), and just focus on your economy and building units. Then compare the results (mainly unit count, factory count, gross Metal income, gross Energy income) to game played by top players. Use PA Stats for this! Really get in there! Pen and paper at the ready, and make notes! Note your Metal and Energy income at 5, 10 etc. minutes, as well as the number of Factories you have. (PA Stats is, again, very useful for this) It's like doing research, and it's fun! (Disclaimer: I am actually doing research as a PhD student, so I might be biased. ) EDIT: Watching YouTube video's is good, if you are looking for specific things to learn. Still, it will only get you so far. You need to get your hands dirty! EDIT2: elodea's PA Stats database: http://pastats.com/player?player=40748. Replays can be found using the in-game replay browser.
I forgot to say - the key thing to getting better in my opinion is, after you've watched a video or replay and identified something that you did not do/something that you could do better, or perhaps a build order you'd like to try ... anything at all really, the key thing is once you have identified it - play a game and try and put it into practice. Do it one at a time, don't build up a list. Identify a weakness, or simply something you think you should be doing, and immediately play a game and focus on it. Watching lots of videos and replays will only go so far if you never actually try and practice what you're figuring out from watching them.
I wish to thank you all, for your replies. I haven't given up, I will keep at it till I can beat the harder ones also. I have read all replies and will follow the advice given, as well as I can. @zihuatanejo Yes I have watched many of ZaphodX videos also, I quite regularly go to YouTube and watch other players playing PA or some of the other games. Even watch some movies that are there, mostly action type, I'm not in to watching all talk and romance movies. We live on different time zones you are in the UK and I am in Australia, so when you see me online here at most time it is late at night or early morning of the next day. @masterofroflness We could team up and become a lousy duo, but one thing I must say is that I don't normally play against other players. I have had and played RTS games since and before the first AoE (Age of Empires) game came out and I can't name all the games I have played, but never against other players. I am on a one way road that always plays against AI.
