Arcen Games
General Category => AI War Classic => AI War Classic - Strategy Discussion => Topic started by: DinosaurVet on June 22, 2015, 03:45:46 pm
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Hi. I'm just about to finish the Beginner Game for vanilla AI War and I've put together a few questions to help my next game go a little smoother.
I'm not sure about gate raiding and neutering. They don't seem to have much effect. I gate raided and neutered planets around my planets with irreplaceable structures and left the ones at my chokepoints, but the AI just gathers forces at the next planet back and attacks anyway. Am I doing something wrong? It is helpful for low value planets I skipped in my backfield though.
Taking out Tachyon guardians for scouting purposes generates a lot of deepstrike reprisals. Is there a better way? I'm grouping up Mk I and II scouts and Scout Starships and group sending them for good range. I may be able to load them up in a transport for extra range, but I'd still need to deepstrike ships to get the whole map.
I feel like I'm not getting the most out of my turrets. I'm more or less following Kahuna's guide with a full cap of Mk I and II turrets and they're doing well in my game, but I don't think they could handle the 2-3k waves I see in some of the AARs. Are the higher mark turrets worth it?
I've taken ~23 planets in my 80 planet galaxy like most people have been saying (20-30) and destroyed all the Data Centers I can find, but my AIP is still 360. That seems a bit high. Did I do something wrong? How many data centers should there be on an 80 planet map?
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I'm not sure about gate raiding and neutering. They don't seem to have much effect. I gate raided and neutered planets around my planets with irreplaceable structures and left the ones at my chokepoints, but the AI just gathers forces at the next planet back and attacks anyway. Am I doing something wrong? It is helpful for low value planets I skipped in my backfield though.
Neutering planets has be done somewhat quickly. If you stick around in those systems, you'll just put the neighbouring ones on alert. I'm guessing you had some military presence that caused alert states on those further-away planets, which led to them being reinforced and thread gathering there.
Taking out Tachyon guardians for scouting purposes generates a lot of deepstrike reprisals. Is there a better way? I'm grouping up Mk I and II scouts and Scout Starships and group sending them for good range. I may be able to load them up in a transport for extra range, but I'd still need to deepstrike ships to get the whole map.
Well, you don't really have to scout the entire map straight from the get-go. You can just see deepstrike range as a limit to your anti-tachyon activities and wait with deeper scouting until you've taken a planet in the corresponding direction.
I feel like I'm not getting the most out of my turrets. I'm more or less following Kahuna's guide with a full cap of Mk I and II turrets and they're doing well in my game, but I don't think they could handle the 2-3k waves I see in some of the AARs. Are the higher mark turrets worth it?
In my experience, turrets alone rarely stand up to repeated waves. Others say otherwise, so I guess I must be doing something wrong.
Still, my recommendation is to keep a moderately sized reserve fleet around and swing it to wherever a wave hits. That'll take some pressure off your turrets, and is just generally a sound strategic practise :D
I've taken ~23 planets in my 80 planet galaxy like most people have been saying (20-30) and destroyed all the Data Centers I can find, but my AIP is still 360. That seems a bit high. Did I do something wrong? How many data centers should there be on an 80 planet map?
Unless you exploit the Superterminal, you will generally see very little absolute AIP reduction. Make sure you get something that's worth it whenever you take an AIP hit, and roll with it. Low-AIP stealth runs are entirely possible, but require a specialised play style. Just look at the numbers - for 25 planets, that's already 500 AIP. Nothing to be concerned about.
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Neutering planets has be done somewhat quickly. If you stick around in those systems, you'll just put the neighbouring ones on alert. I'm guessing you had some military presence that caused alert states on those further-away planets, which led to them being reinforced and thread gathering there.
I neutered them then moved on, but attacks are still coming several hours later. They are unannounced waves though. I get normal waves on my southern border where I left the systems intact, but the AI sneaks attacks onto my northern worlds all the time.
Unless you exploit the Superterminal, you will generally see very little absolute AIP reduction. Make sure you get something that's worth it whenever you take an AIP hit, and roll with it. Low-AIP stealth runs are entirely possible, but require a specialised play style. Just look at the numbers - for 25 planets, that's already 500 AIP. Nothing to be concerned about.
Ok cool. Just from reading the forums briefly looking for answers the general consensus seemed to be that AIP>300 is ghastly. Glad to know I haven't screwed it up. Though I did accidentally get to -38 HaP. That was...enlightening.
Actually that raises another question. Does the AI keep spawning threat as long as the HaP is negative? I'd kill a few thousand then it'd rebound back up.
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I feel like I'm not getting the most out of my turrets. I'm more or less following Kahuna's guide with a full cap of Mk I and II turrets and they're doing well in my game, but I don't think they could handle the 2-3k waves I see in some of the AARs. Are the higher mark turrets worth it?
In my experience, turrets alone rarely stand up to repeated waves. Others say otherwise, so I guess I must be doing something wrong.
Still, my recommendation is to keep a moderately sized reserve fleet around and swing it to wherever a wave hits. That'll take some pressure off your turrets, and is just generally a sound strategic practise :D
CS-Mil 3 is equivalent to doubling the mark level of all turrets.
Firepower:
One cap:
| Level | CS-Econ | CS-Mil 1 | CS-Mil 2 | CS-Mil 3 |
| 1 | 1 | 1.2 | 1.5 | 2 |
| 2 | 2 | 2.4 | 3 | 4 |
| 3 | 3 | 3.6 | 4.5 | 6 |
| 4 | 4 | 4.8 | 6 | 8 |
| 5 | 7.5 | 9 | 11.25 | 15 |
All caps:
| Level | CS-Econ | CS-Mil 1 | CS-Mil 2 | CS-Mil 3 |
| 1 | 1 | 1.2 | 1.5 | 2 |
| 2 | 3 | 3.6 | 4.5 | 6 |
| 3 | 6 | 7.2 | 9 | 12 |
| 4 | 10 | 12 | 15 | 20 |
| 5 | 17.5 | 21 | 26.25 | 35 |
(Yeah, I know that Mk5 is unlocked separately)
Neutering planets has be done somewhat quickly. If you stick around in those systems, you'll just put the neighbouring ones on alert. I'm guessing you had some military presence that caused alert states on those further-away planets, which led to them being reinforced and thread gathering there.
I neutered them then moved on, but attacks are still coming several hours later. They are unannounced waves though. I get normal waves on my southern border where I left the systems intact, but the AI sneaks attacks onto my northern worlds all the time.
There are various kinds of attack the AI can make:
- Regular waves: They appear with warning, on your planets.
- Threat: Ships the AI can do whatever it wants with. They generally won't attack without overwhelming local superiority.
- Cross-planet waves: The AI sends a wave to its own planet and... somethingsomething.
- Special Forces: A bunch of riot control starships and tractor platforms that run around AI space with a bit of support. On higher difficulties, I've
- Cross-planet attack: this releases a bunch of ships into threat. It is dangerous because threat is dangerous.
- Exogalactic strike force: a bunch of ships that try to fly straight at your home command station, no matter the opposition. Often huge.
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Sounds like the attacks you're seeing are almost exclusively Threat. You should do what you can to avoid provoking it; attacking guard posts or tachyon posts without killing the things you wake up is a really good way to get a lot of threat very fast. Keep a close eye on the threat warning at the top of the screen, and put scouts on enemy planets at least 2-3 deep from your territory...you'll want to check the galaxy map for threat on a regular basis (that's one of the dropdown options and I think it defaults to shift-T, or maybe that's something I configured on mine), so you know where it might come in from. If threat gets to be more than a hundred or two you should consider proactively attacking their threat ships. Threat hits you where you're weak, so compare that threat number to your defenses on any planet that borders AI territory...if you'd lose a planet if that many ships attack, then they probably will attack. Otherwise they bide their time.
You mentioned deepstrikes...yeah, don't do deepstrikes, or at least don't keep your ships in deepstrike-level territory unless you're going to pull them back REALLY fast. If you're trying to hit a DC or co-processor, seriously consider scrapping your ships as soon as they've killed their target. Threat builds up by the second when you are deepstriking. That, and seriously do NOT underestimate how much stuff you'll wake up by just hunting tachyons. Every once in a while I decide to send some raid starships or a wad of cloaked things to exterminate like ten or twenty planets' worth of tachyons in one go, and every time I do it, I lose the game almost immediately. You'll wake up a bunch of stuff and it'll join up with Threat as soon as you leave. Doing that on Mk.IV planets is suicide. Be careful--you don't even need to be deepstriking to screw yourself over this way. If you really really want to scout things out but you can't clear a path without a lot of deepstrikes, consider 1) loading scouts into a full cap of assault transports and planning to lose a whole ton of them, and 2) find a planet really far out in the direction you want to scout that you'll want to keep later in the game, even just as a chokepoint or something with a lot of metal, and capture it early. That'll push back the range of what's considered deepstriking, and will let your transports hop a lot farther before dying of attrition. Just remember to be careful what you wake up!
Now, threat can't quite come from ANYwhere. If you have captured a lot of territory but there's a lone AI planet somewhere in the middle, not connected to the rest of their space, gate raiding (and maybe neutering) is entirely sufficient. Threat from elsewhere can't get there, so you don't need to significantly defend against attacks. Once you gate raid it, as long as you stay out you can pretty much ignore it...maybe sweep through once every few hours to clean out their ships, but otherwise you're fine. You probably don't even need force fields on your command stations that only border an isolated and neutered planet, because there's just not much they can do with it at all.
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I take back what I said earlier. I was just playing and my game is actually in an unwinnable situation so *shrug*. I can hold them off very easily, but I can't even scratch their Core Worlds. I just think I'm not smart/tactical enough to play this game If I can't beat the beginner game. I'm a turtler in most other RTS and I'm terrible at guerrilla warfare. :(
Sounds like the attacks you're seeing are almost exclusively Threat. You should do what you can to avoid provoking it; attacking guard posts or tachyon posts without killing the things you wake up is a really good way to get a lot of threat very fast. Keep a close eye on the threat warning at the top of the screen, and put scouts on enemy planets at least 2-3 deep from your territory...you'll want to check the galaxy map for threat on a regular basis (that's one of the dropdown options and I think it defaults to shift-T, or maybe that's something I configured on mine), so you know where it might come in from. If threat gets to be more than a hundred or two you should consider proactively attacking their threat ships. Threat hits you where you're weak, so compare that threat number to your defenses on any planet that borders AI territory...if you'd lose a planet if that many ships attack, then they probably will attack. Otherwise they bide their time.
I watched where the attacks are coming from and it was threat. My general strategy was take 4 bomber starships and fly through enemy space destroying Tachyon Guardians until the starships died. That'd build up a bunch of threat so I'd wait until I destroyed it before going again. I did station scouts on critical enemy paths and that let me see threat coming from far away so that was very helpful. Once I knew where they were I'd take them out first.
You mentioned deepstrikes...yeah, don't do deepstrikes, or at least don't keep your ships in deepstrike-level territory unless you're going to pull them back REALLY fast. If you're trying to hit a DC or co-processor, seriously consider scrapping your ships as soon as they've killed their target. Threat builds up by the second when you are deepstriking. That, and seriously do NOT underestimate how much stuff you'll wake up by just hunting tachyons. Every once in a while I decide to send some raid starships or a wad of cloaked things to exterminate like ten or twenty planets' worth of tachyons in one go, and every time I do it, I lose the game almost immediately. You'll wake up a bunch of stuff and it'll join up with Threat as soon as you leave. Doing that on Mk.IV planets is suicide. Be careful--you don't even need to be deepstriking to screw yourself over this way. If you really really want to scout things out but you can't clear a path without a lot of deepstrikes, consider 1) loading scouts into a full cap of assault transports and planning to lose a whole ton of them, and 2) find a planet really far out in the direction you want to scout that you'll want to keep later in the game, even just as a chokepoint or something with a lot of metal, and capture it early. That'll push back the range of what's considered deepstriking, and will let your transports hop a lot farther before dying of attrition. Just remember to be careful what you wake up!
I tried the transport strategy and it doesn't really work unfortunately. I can Tachyon Drill 4 jumps out without deepstriking, but the transports attrition to death before I make it to what would be deepstrike territory. Taking planets might be possible. How do you defend planets way out in the sticks though? I can neuter the planets surrounding it, but it'd be the first thing to kill on the threat fleets list.
Now, threat can't quite come from ANYwhere. If you have captured a lot of territory but there's a lone AI planet somewhere in the middle, not connected to the rest of their space, gate raiding (and maybe neutering) is entirely sufficient. Threat from elsewhere can't get there, so you don't need to significantly defend against attacks. Once you gate raid it, as long as you stay out you can pretty much ignore it...maybe sweep through once every few hours to clean out their ships, but otherwise you're fine. You probably don't even need force fields on your command stations that only border an isolated and neutered planet, because there's just not much they can do with it at all.
I had a few of those. One of my space docks was routing built units through there on the way to the front, but they weren't waking anything up. Is that ok?
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I take back what I said earlier. I was just playing and my game is actually in an unwinnable situation so *shrug*. I can hold them off very easily, but I can't even scratch their Core Worlds. I just think I'm not smart/tactical enough to play this game If I can't beat the beginner game. I'm a turtler in most other RTS and I'm terrible at guerrilla warfare. :(
The things you unlock, and the things you capture, are a big part of it. What does your list of unlocks look like? Have you captured all the advanced research stations? There's two main ways to make the game unwinnable long term, 1) push the AIP too high and 2) make really, really bad knowledge-spending decisions. Both are remedied with a little practice. What difficulty are you playing on?
The quickest things I'd suggest to try for knocking down core worlds, that you could probably try in your current game, are... Try using stealth more, to sneak up on the nastier turrets. Park a minifortress on the other side of the wormhole so you can hit-and-run better. Establish a beachhead by bringing like twenty engineers after your fleet, build some way to heal, and a huge pile of turrets. Of course you need supply next door to do that.
I tried the transport strategy and it doesn't really work unfortunately. I can Tachyon Drill 4 jumps out without deepstriking, but the transports attrition to death before I make it to what would be deepstrike territory. Taking planets might be possible. How do you defend planets way out in the sticks though? I can neuter the planets surrounding it, but it'd be the first thing to kill on the threat fleets list.
If you haven't unlocked assault transports--give them a shot. Not only is the stealth really nice, but they suffer less attrition per jump in hostile territory. They can also take a surprising amount of punishment.
Oh yeah, and check the controls menu. There's keys you can assign that tell your ships to find the nearest transport and get into them. They make it possible to use transports tactically in combat (and if you use assault transports, putting them to sleep will let your whole fleet vanish into thin air by loading into a cloaked transport).
If the system doesn't have anything irreplaceable, losing it is fine. Plus it'll keep the AI distracted. Honestly though, if the AI ever attacks using their threat fleet at all, it usually means you let it get too big. (Lots of turrets will help deter or stop them too...and if they are attacking something you can afford to lose, then you're getting scrap from them dying in your territory, and you're whittling away at their forces almost for free.)
I had a few of those. One of my space docks was routing built units through there on the way to the front, but they weren't waking anything up. Is that ok?
Yeah, that's totally fine.
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The things you unlock, and the things you capture, are a big part of it. What does your list of unlocks look like? Have you captured all the advanced research stations? There's two main ways to make the game unwinnable long term, 1) push the AIP too high and 2) make really, really bad knowledge-spending decisions. Both are remedied with a little practice. What difficulty are you playing on?
6/10
My AIP is 399 :'(
My unlocks so far are
Fighter/bomber/frigate I-IV
Raider I
Laser Gatling/Space Tank/Armor Ship/MRLS/Bulletproof Fighter I, II
Electric Shuttle I, V
Space Tank/Armor Ship V
Flagship I,II
Zenith Starship I,II, V
Spire Starship I-IV
Leech I,II, V
Plasma Siege I,II
Heavy Bomber I,II, V
One thing I did notice was that I got notice of a 2,000 ship Laser Gatling wave to one of my planets. I watched the only AI planet that they could have come from, but the ships just appeared out of thin air. They didn't travel to my system from anywhere they just poofed into existence in my system. Is that normal?
:edit: Just tried again. The beachhead strategy worked and I cleared the Core World but the response was 6,000 fighters and that was all she wrote. Oh well so much for that. Gonna try some Assault Transport Cheese.
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deepstrike reprisals.
Do you mean threat generated from deepstriking or reprisal waves?
I feel like I'm not getting the most out of my turrets. I'm more or less following Kahuna's guide with a full cap of Mk I and II turrets and they're doing well in my game, but I don't think they could handle the 2-3k waves I see in some of the AARs. Are the higher mark turrets worth it?
Upload a screenshot or the .sav file so we can take a look at your stuff. Yes higher marks of turrets are very much worth it. Especially when combined with Military Command Station, Munitions Boosters or Flagships.
In my experience, turrets alone rarely stand up to repeated waves. Others say otherwise, so I guess I must be doing something wrong.
Still, my recommendation is to keep a moderately sized reserve fleet around and swing it to wherever a wave hits. That'll take some pressure off your turrets, and is just generally a sound strategic practise :D
There are 3 strategies: Turrets (and all the defenses in general), fleet (fleet ship and starship styles being the sub types) and a mix of those 2. If you're not going for pure turret style then yes you will need ships for defense purposes. Also if you're not going for pure turret style then it really is a good idea to get rid of some of the threat before moving your fleet far from your planets (attack etc.). When you do that you're missing some of the defensive firepower and then the threat will attack. I think the AI "keeps an eye" on human fleets 3 hops away. So when you move your fleet >3 hops away from a planet you want to defend the threat might attack.
They are unannounced waves though.
Are you getting those "x ships to ? ? ?" wave warnings?
Does the AI keep spawning threat as long as the HaP is negative? I'd kill a few thousand then it'd rebound back up.
HaP only affects on the hacking response.
minifortress
Noooo no no no. Minifortress is on of the most useless things in the game.
I take back what I said earlier. I was just playing and my game is actually in an unwinnable situation so *shrug*. I can hold them off very easily, but I can't even scratch their Core Worlds.
Beachheading as Traveller said or you can use Warheads cloaked by Cloaker Starships to blow up the AI's strategic reserve and everything in fact.
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If you don't have a different multiplexed repair unlock, I'm never gonna be convinced that miniforts aren't worth it. I'm waaaay in the minority though, I accept that.
Hmm. I'm really curious what AIs you're playing against--there's a small possibility you might be using a weird one with weird wave rules.
"the response was 6,000 fighters" -- what type of response was it? Seems pretty huge. I'd be very interested in seeing one of your save files, yeah.
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Here's the save.
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If you don't have a different multiplexed repair unlock, I'm never gonna be convinced that miniforts aren't worth it. I'm waaaay in the minority though, I accept that.
It is true the repair ability is very useful but I'd rather pay 2000 knowledge "extra" and unlock Mobile Space Docks which also have that ability. You can have up to 10 MSDs and they all have that repair ability. In addition to that all 10 MSDs combined build ships_really_fast so you can just keep spamming in a big fight if you have the metal.
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If you don't have a different multiplexed repair unlock, I'm never gonna be convinced that miniforts aren't worth it. I'm waaaay in the minority though, I accept that.
It is true the repair ability is very useful but I'd rather pay 2000 knowledge "extra" and unlock Mobile Space Docks which also have that ability. You can have up to 10 MSDs and they all have that repair ability. In addition to that all 10 MSDs combined build ships_really_fast so you can just keep spamming in a big fight if you have the metal.
Generally I unlock them when I'm setting up lots of unattended beachheads. A bunch of turrets, a rebuilder drone, and some mini-forts to keep everything repaired. Without them, attrition helps the AI wear down the beachhead much faster.
But for general usage? Yeah, pretty bad.
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I'm wondering, how do you think about normal fortresses?
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I'm wondering, how do you think about normal fortresses?
They come after turrets in the unlock list. Not terrible if you have chokes.
ModForts are good, though. (Parasite turrets! IRE turrets! Plasma Siege Turrets! Defense drone turrets! Cloaking Turrets! Heat beam turrets! >D )
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If you don't have a different multiplexed repair unlock, I'm never gonna be convinced that miniforts aren't worth it. I'm waaaay in the minority though, I accept that.
It is true the repair ability is very useful but I'd rather pay 2000 knowledge "extra" and unlock Mobile Space Docks which also have that ability. You can have up to 10 MSDs and they all have that repair ability. In addition to that all 10 MSDs combined build ships_really_fast so you can just keep spamming in a big fight if you have the metal.
Generally I unlock them when I'm setting up lots of unattended beachheads. A bunch of turrets, a rebuilder drone, and some mini-forts to keep everything repaired. Without them, attrition helps the AI wear down the beachhead much faster.
Well that's certainly true yes. Hmm yes that would make it possible to have permanent beachheads which would keep the Hybrid numbers low. That would be very useful if you have ships like Golems, Spirecraft or Spire capital ships which can't be loaded into Assault Transports to ignore all the hybrids and threat ships. A zenith power generator would probably be necessary though.
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I'm wondering, how do you think about normal fortresses?
Conclusion:
Fortresses, Turrets and Heavy Beam Cannons are all excellent choices. Which ones you should go for depends on your strategy, preference and situation.
-If you're going to use Fortresses you're going to have to use Economical Command Stations and unlock something that counters Polycrystal (Bombers) like Lightning, Missile or Sniper Turrets. Also Fortresses are only for small/medium size empires (+-7 planets including Homeworld). For small/medium sized empires because Fortresses have galactic cap and large empires have "too many" planets connected to the AI planets so the player would run out of Fortresses. Of course you can do gate raiding but you can't really control where the CPAs and Exos come from. Fortresses are very good for creating chokepoints.
-Turrets are always a good choice regardless of the size of your empire. If you have a small/medium size empire with a few or no chokepoints then Military Command Stations are a better choice. If you have a medium/large empire and have beachheads then you should go for the Economical Command Stations to keep up with the raising Energy costs. Turrets are really powerful in the early game because Mark II Turrets cost only 750 Knowledge. They're the #1 choice for low AIP
-Heavy Beam Cannons work well with Military Command Stations. Heavy Beam Cannons' Energy consumption isn't going to wreck your economy so you can manage without Economical Command Stations. Like Fortresses they have a galactic cap so they're only for small/medium size empires and chokepoints. HBCs don't use attack multipliers so they're good vs everything. Mark IV HBC is an absolute beast.
Fortresses are very strong but you have to find a way to deal with their energy cost and weakness to Polycrystal.
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Turrets are really powerful in the early game because Mark II Turrets cost only 750 Knowledge. They're the #1 choice for low AIP
Interesting. I'm a low-AIP player and I always use almost my knowledge in fleet/starships. I'll try MkII turrets on low AIP, one day. Thanks!
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I guess I should have said #1_defensive_choice for low AIP games.
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You guys have probably been busy, but did you notice any glaring problems with my save file? Things I can improve upon?
I managed to clear the Core World, now it's on to the homeworld, but...man that's a lot of ships. The strategic reserve does not mess around.
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You guys have probably been busy, but did you notice any glaring problems with my save file? Things I can improve upon?
I managed to clear the Core World, now it's on to the homeworld, but...man that's a lot of ships. The strategic reserve does not mess around.
I played around with your game a bit, and right off the top: build more Space Docks! Concentrate your Engineers! Stop building Mercenaries! Build more Matter Converters! Build more Turrets on border worlds, and fewer on interior systems! Beachhead surrounded AI systems you aren't going to capture! Choose you Command Stations for a specific purpose, and change them when the need changes!
And, too late to do anything about it, but: 1) Don't capture so many systems! You've captured a fairly large number of systems for what you've accomplished. Generally, whenever you think of capturing a system, you should be asking "What does THIS system give me that some other system couldn't instead?"
2) Concentrate you Knowledge expenditures. You've unlocked Mk III Harvesters, Mk III Military Stations, AND Mk II Econ stations. Usually, it is better to concentrate on just one of these. If you'd done just one of these to Mk III, you'd have 13,000 additional Knowledge to unlock Turrets and Fleetships.
In a little more detail: When I loaded up the game, the very first thing I did was change your setting from "Build 5 engineers per system" to "build 1 Mk I engineer", and concentrated the rest on the Homeworld and Zimipu. I also pulled back all other ships you had deployed elsewhere to Zimipu, replacing them with Turrets. I built 6 Space Docks on Zimipu and 3 more on the Homeworld, setting aside one for high-cost ships, and the rest for the Mk I-III cheap ships. This greatly helps speed up refleeting, because you are not forced to wait through a 20 second Mk V unit creation for each .5 second Mk I unit.
Once I had the fleet all together at Zimipu, I loaded up the Assault Transports and Normal Transports, and did a quick run to rescue the Rebel Colony. This was when I realize you'd unlocked Mk III military stations, but hadn't placed them all. Which led to a review of all you station placements. You have 6 Mk I Military Command Stations sitting on interior systems. They aren't doing anything there, and should be replaced by Econ stations. Even a Mk I Econ station is a significant increase over a Mk I Mil station.
Anyway, placed a Mk III Mil station, built a bunch of turrets. Went back through your systems, and scrapped most of your Force Fields. Kilfo, Drether, Hasinitch all have FFs that can be MUCH better used elsewhere. Also, 6 FFs in only useful when you KNOW whatever they are protecting will come under fire - something to be avoided. One forcefield is all you really need, to cover against stray fire and escapees. Instead, you should concentrate your defenses on making sure the AI never gets within range to shoot at your command station.
Once the Rebel Colony was rescued, I built out their fleet and replaced my units. Beachheaded the Core World lightly to wear down the Reserves, and built 3 Mk III Lightning Warheads.
Finally, once the Reserves had been reduced and my Warheads were ready, I moved everything onto the AI Homeworld. I used a Warhead to destroy the last of the Reserves, and just swept my Fleetball around in a loop destroying the Core Guardposts. The Plasma Eye was annoying at the end there, but there were enough AI units that it was only shooting for the last minute or two before the Core Guardposts went down. After that, a mere Mk III Fortress isn't worth talking about.
Thinking about it later, I should have brought along a Hacker and used some Sabotage to make things a little easier...
At that point, I stopped playing. You are in an OK position - your primary problem is the AIP, and there simply isn't much you can do about that now. I'd just start moving towards whichever of those last few unexplored worlds in the 2nd AI Homeworld, capturing every 3rd or 4th system and neutering the rest. Once you find the 2nd homeworld, it's the same deal again: Build a base, build up your fleet while clearing the Core World, then doing a final strike with everything you have (including Warheads).
Easy to say, at least :)
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I played around with your game a bit, and right off the top: build more Space Docks! Concentrate your Engineers! Stop building Mercenaries! Build more Matter Converters! Build more Turrets on border worlds, and fewer on interior systems! Beachhead surrounded AI systems you aren't going to capture! Choose you Command Stations for a specific purpose, and change them when the need changes!
Mercenaries aren't worth it I take it? I had all that metal (and now all that spare energy from your suggestion about econ stations). Shouldn't I use it on mercenary ships to have more ships to strike with?
By beachhead skipped systems you mean jump in and set up a turret line?
And, too late to do anything about it, but: 1) Don't capture so many systems! You've captured a fairly large number of systems for what you've accomplished. Generally, whenever you think of capturing a system, you should be asking "What does THIS system give me that some other system couldn't instead?"
2) Concentrate you Knowledge expenditures. You've unlocked Mk III Harvesters, Mk III Military Stations, AND Mk II Econ stations. Usually, it is better to concentrate on just one of these. If you'd done just one of these to Mk III, you'd have 13,000 additional Knowledge to unlock Turrets and Fleetships.
Yeah sorry about that. I kept getting attacked from my backfield so I thought I'd try clearing it. I'd clear the guard posts and the warp gate, but they'd still send unnanounced ships from neutered planets. Jimoat was a frequent offender. I'll handle it better next time.
In a little more detail: When I loaded up the game, the very first thing I did was change your setting from "Build 5 engineers per system" to "build 1 Mk I engineer", and concentrated the rest on the Homeworld and Zimipu. I also pulled back all other ships you had deployed elsewhere to Zimipu, replacing them with Turrets. I built 6 Space Docks on Zimipu and 3 more on the Homeworld, setting aside one for high-cost ships, and the rest for the Mk I-III cheap ships. This greatly helps speed up refleeting, because you are not forced to wait through a 20 second Mk V unit creation for each .5 second Mk I unit.
Good idea. I'll do that from now on.
Once I had the fleet all together at Zimipu, I loaded up the Assault Transports and Normal Transports, and did a quick run to rescue the Rebel Colony. This was when I realize you'd unlocked Mk III military stations, but hadn't placed them all. Which led to a review of all you station placements. You have 6 Mk I Military Command Stations sitting on interior systems. They aren't doing anything there, and should be replaced by Econ stations. Even a Mk I Econ station is a significant increase over a Mk I Mil station.
Anyway, placed a Mk III Mil station, built a bunch of turrets. Went back through your systems, and scrapped most of your Force Fields. Kilfo, Drether, Hasinitch all have FFs that can be MUCH better used elsewhere. Also, 6 FFs in only useful when you KNOW whatever they are protecting will come under fire - something to be avoided. One forcefield is all you really need, to cover against stray fire and escapees. Instead, you should concentrate your defenses on making sure the AI never gets within range to shoot at your command station.
Sorry about that. Those were old defense points/irreplaceables and I forgot to switch them over once the front line moved on. I did have a question about the forcefields though. Is it just a matter of more tractor beam turrets to hold AI ships back? Since they're aren't enough to go around do people just scrap tractor turrets in systems not under attack and put them in systems where you know they're going to be throwing 4,000 ships?
Akiapegar and Toothnomurd are opposite defense strategies. I used them to experiment. Which seems better? Both have only one hostile wormhole, one defends at the wormhole the other defends at the station. I constantly have to pull Toothnomurd out of the fire, but Akiapegar has held against giant waves by itself so I'd go with defending at the wormhole, but I'm open to hear your thoughts.
Once the Rebel Colony was rescued, I built out their fleet and replaced my units. Beachheaded the Core World lightly to wear down the Reserves, and built 3 Mk III Lightning Warheads.
Finally, once the Reserves had been reduced and my Warheads were ready, I moved everything onto the AI Homeworld. I used a Warhead to destroy the last of the Reserves, and just swept my Fleetball around in a loop destroying the Core Guardposts. The Plasma Eye was annoying at the end there, but there were enough AI units that it was only shooting for the last minute or two before the Core Guardposts went down. After that, a mere Mk III Fortress isn't worth talking about.
Thinking about it later, I should have brought along a Hacker and used some Sabotage to make things a little easier...
I'm not sure how you did this. I thought the AI would always leave 70% of the reserve no matter what you did to a Core world. I thought you had to face the last 70% on the homeworld.
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I played around with your game a bit, and right off the top: build more Space Docks! Concentrate your Engineers! Stop building Mercenaries! Build more Matter Converters! Build more Turrets on border worlds, and fewer on interior systems! Beachhead surrounded AI systems you aren't going to capture! Choose you Command Stations for a specific purpose, and change them when the need changes!
Mercenaries aren't worth it I take it? I had all that metal (and now all that spare energy from your suggestion about econ stations). Shouldn't I use it on mercenary ships to have more ships to strike with?
Generally, no. Mercenary units cost 10x the cost of the equivalent player unit. Mercenary Enclaves are worth it. Mercenary Parasites are OK, due to special mechanics about how Mk interacts with reclaiming units. Everything else is less than efficient. If you are already at you metal cap, then sure. But never build a Mercenary unit over something else.
Second, because of their cost, it is best to be more careful with them. I normally leave all Mercs on my Homeworld, as a final "Win or Die" reserve. Only in the end game do they get spent.
Just as a quick note, it is possible to have the game auto-manage keeping a metal reserve. If you assign the Mercenary Dock to a control group (I usually use Group 9), you can go to the Controls screen, flip to the Control-Group-Specific tab, select your group, and put a number in the "Suspend spending if Resources Less Than" box. I usually set that number to about 90% of my max resources, going back periodically to update as I grow.
By beachhead skipped systems you mean jump in and set up a turret line?
Correct. A group of turrets will kill the AI reinforcements as they spawn, never giving them enough time to build up threat to attack you.
Yeah sorry about that. I kept getting attacked from my backfield so I thought I'd try clearing it. I'd clear the guard posts and the warp gate, but they'd still send unnanounced ships from neutered planets. Jimoat was a frequent offender. I'll handle it better next time.
Just a note on mechanics and terminology as used around here. A Wave is an announced group of ships sent to the wormhole of a single specific targeted human system. These must originate from Warp Gates. What you were experiencing was called Threat, or border-aggression. Basically, after you cleared the AI system, it still got reinforcements. However, without Guardposts to protect, those AI ships become free-roaming "Threat" (you can see the total Threat in the galaxy in the upper right). When there got to be enough of those, it was stronger than your neighboring systems. At that point, it just piles in. If you keep down the number of AI units in that system, or keep enough turrets in your neighboring systems, it won't send the Threat in.
Akiapegar and Toothnomurd are opposite defense strategies. I used them to experiment. Which seems better? Both have only one hostile wormhole, one defends at the wormhole the other defends at the station. I constantly have to pull Toothnomurd out of the fire, but Akiapegar has held against giant waves by itself so I'd go with defending at the wormhole, but I'm open to hear your thoughts.
Toothnomurd is a MUCH better defensive set up than Akiapegar. Akiapegar will drop a hammer on the AI units as soon as they enter the system, but if there are enough to get away from the wormhole, your system is toast.
Toothnomurd, on the other hand, makes all the AI ships traverse the entire system, getting shot by Snipers, Missile Turrets, running through Mines, all before it finally reaches something it wants to attack. And while the AI is sitting there pounding on your ForceFields, your turrets are still shooting at it.
The only minor issue I had with Toothnomurd is the way you spread your Sniper and Spiders out in wings. This is not good, as it distracts the AI units. Some of them go off-course to attack those, and escape the mines, tractors, and other turrets. It is better to concentrate your Snipers, close to your Command Station but not under FF.
If you haven't, I suggest you read Kahuna's guide to defense. There's a link is his sig. He explains in excellent detail not only what, but why.
I'm not sure how you did this. I thought the AI would always leave 70% of the reserve no matter what you did to a Core world. I thought you had to face the last 70% on the homeworld.
You are correct. But by destroying the relatively small group of 30% of the reserve on the Core World, the AI cannot deploy it on the Homeworld. If you just zoom though, ignoring those units, they will undeploy and redeploy back on the Homeworld.
Reserve size is based on AIP, but it is galaxy wide for each AI player. Reducing it in one place reduces it in all. At least, until it recharges, which takes a few hours.
Actually, just noticed it didn't actually matter - The Core World is AI 1, the Homeworld is AI 2. Ah, well. I always use different colors for the AIs when I play, so I thought Red AI = Red AI. Oops.
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I did it! I cleared out both AI homeworlds! Thanks for the help that was great. I was using a strategy of jumping in with my fleet and clearing as much as I could then retreating before I was overwhelmed. I'd have reinforcements streaming in and i'd keep making these glancing attacks until all the guard posts were down.
The only strange thing was that it kept telling me that an Exo galactic strike force was coming. The timer counts down and I kept on the lookout for huge nasty fleets, but nothing ever appeared. What gives?