General Category > AI War Classic - After Action Reports
7.6 & 8 - The Exile and The Rebels
Hurmferd:
This is a very fun, challenging game! And, at times, very tense. A funny thing happened on my way to save some rebels this past week...
I've been playing a game with 7.6 & 8 difficulty, 80 planets, medium broken golems, full fog of war, and most options turned on with all DLC.
I discovered the exile (Woo Hoo!), hacked it, and then succeeded in the arduous, tedious task of repairing it. The AI kept attacking me while I was reparing it, so I often repaired it an extra 10 or 15% only to find that the AI damaged it back down below where I had started. So I stopped all ship-building and defense-bolstering until the exile was repaired, probably a total of 5 hours of gametime, and Wow! This thing is a death-dealing machine. But very slow, very slow. It's a blast! If you haven't found the exile yet, I recommend that you start a game with the exile and do your best to activate it. It's well worth your effort just to see it in action.
While I was repairing the exile, I had been getting warnings that a rebel colony was about to lose invisibility, and when I finally finished repairing the exile, there was ony 10 minutes remaining, so I decided to take it out for a spin to save the rebel colony! But I didn't know exactly where the rebels were located. I mean, I had a general idea based on a circle on the map, but I had not yet explored that region. I knew that this was going to be close.
I started down an unexplored wormhole that looked like a good possibility, but it ended in a path that looped back to my own homeworld area with no other unexplored wormholes. Now there's only 5 minutes left before the rebels lose invisibility and I had two unexplored wormholes that look like they might lead to the rebel camp. I chose the wormhole on the right since the left hand side is also known as the "sinister" side.
My exile was slicing through the enemies, sometimes hundreds and maybe thousands at a time! It was a thing of beauty. I carved a path of destruction through the planets, dozens and dozens of Riot starships, Flagships, Bomber starships, and hundreds upon hundreds of fighters, frigates, tanks, and other ships were vaporized. I blew up ion cannons and guardians, and whatever I targeted. And then I saw the last unexplored wormhole that surely led to the rebels, with only a couple of minutes to spare. My exile was down to less than 50% heaith. I entered the wormhole and found...
That I was on the opposite side of the map! It was not the rebel camp, so I was sorely disappointed.
And then my blood froze. On that planet, I saw that I had activated multiple swarms of what looked like hundreds of high mark starships that were clustered around some alien structures that I had never seen before. And then I spotted a large black-as-night dire guardian coming my way. Uh oh, not good. So I scanned the map listing, seeing that sure enough, I had stumbled upon one of AI home command planets. My exile was tearing through the swarms by that time, however my exile was now down to 10% health and it was obvious that there was absolutely no way that the exile would take them all out.
I quickly backed the exile out of the wormhold and ran (more like lazily walked...) to make my way back home, 7 hops away. But the AI was pissed off. Huge groups of starships poured forth from the wormhole after me. My exile cut them down, one swarm after another, but he was taking a lot of damage while doing so. "C'mon! C'mon, Cmon you slow machine", I yelled at my monitor. 5% health remaining. 4%. 3%.
And then an alert flashed up on the screen: "Rebel colony lost" 80 AI points were added to my total, bringing me over the threshold 305 points, into the next higher level of AI alert. Oh well, I tried, and I had my Exile to save, darn it!
And still my Exile trundled along, cutting down those ships that followed me. After a while, the large groups of hundreds of ships became small groups of ten ships, and finally one or two ships, and then I was home. 0% left of health was left on the exile -- 200,000 health was left out of 27 million health to start. Phew! I leaned back in my chair and breathed a sigh of relief, very relieved to not have lost that excellent golem after all of my hard work to repair it.
"You have lost!!" then flashed up in big bold yellow letters. The AI attacked my homeworld while I was distracted in trying to rescue my Exile.
And the AI mocked me in smaller yellow letters, "They really scraped the bottom of the barrel when they selected you as commander!", or some such taunt. I'll get him next time.
H.
Mánagarmr:
Hah, lol. I accidently reported this post instead of another one. I'm sorry mate xD
Nice writeup!
Pumpkin:
Very funny mistake feast.
--- Quote from: Hurmferd on July 17, 2016, 03:35:25 pm ---most options turned on
--- End quote ---
That sounds like a first mistake. Manageable, however, but above 7/7, mistakes become lethal.
--- Quote from: Hurmferd on July 17, 2016, 03:35:25 pm ---full fog of war
--- End quote ---
I believe you also checked "don't show unexplored planets" (the way you talk about scouting hints that). Rebelling Colonies + "extra-extra-FoW" is highly discouraged.
--- Quote from: Hurmferd on July 17, 2016, 03:35:25 pm ---I discovered the exile (Woo Hoo!), hacked it, and then succeeded in the arduous, tedious task of repairing it.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: Hurmferd on July 17, 2016, 03:35:25 pm ---While I was repairing the exile, I had been getting warnings that a rebel colony was about to lose invisibility, and when I finally finished repairing the exile, there was ony 10 minutes remaining
--- End quote ---
Wow. That is a double mistake. 1st: ignoring a rebel colony outside of scout range (even more critical with "extra-extra-FoW"). You need to (1) scout earlier and (2) don't ignore warnings. 2nd: rushing for the exile, which is your grander problem in this game.
--- Quote from: Hurmferd on July 17, 2016, 03:35:25 pm ---probably a total of 5 hours of gametime
--- End quote ---
As rebelling colonies don't trigger before the 4th hour (IIRC) but not long after, I suppose you repaired the Exile at the 5th hour mark (not 5 hours after the beginning of repairing it). That would mean you searched, found, hacked and repaired it in less than 5 hours, neglecting defenses and fleet (and I suppose other crucial things like ARS and adv. facto/ssc). Anyway, listening at how you used your exile, it seems you had no fleet to accompany it, so I'll suppose your main fleet was at best in defense.
The true mistake resides in not using the Exile to finish the game. You don't talk about the lore at all, and I doubt you thoroughly read the journal. It clearly warns you about the dangers of repairing the Exile and states you must be ready before. With no scout (at least no homeworld was scouted) and no/few/idle fleet, you weren't, apparently.
The exile triggers big waves during the repair. That mean you'll need metal for both repairing the Exile (the faster the better) and sustaining defenses. That requires a grand economy. Let see what you let us guess... You say the +80 of the ignored rebelling colony brought you at 305 AIP, which means you were at 225 before. Provided you poorly scouted, I bet you didn't found many datacenters and weren't able to hit the four co-processors, which mean you didn't get all the bangs (metal) from your bucks (AIP). However 225 isn't low, so I bet you still had a chunk of the galaxy for you.
But the result speaks by itself: you weren't able to properly defend you rebuilding Exile, losing tremendous amount of metal with each wave scratching its paint. You were forced to suspend your military production in order to finish the Exile earlier, which is a desperate decision.
Then when the Exile went online, you sealed the grave you dug for yourself by going after the colony instead of the homeworld. Once the Exile is online, the AI sends exos which are more and more powerful with time, and exponentially more with how close the Exile is from a homeworld and an exogalactic homeworld (which is its destination). You are basically forced to move-click the Exile toward the nearest homeworld as soon as it goes online and don't give it any order before reaching said homeworld (then the next and last order is a move toward the exo wormhole. Nothing else). I think the Exile could become an allied unit upon complete repair and doing that move itself, but you need to be able to chose your path (even if the shortest seems the best) and your time of departure (you may want to wait for your fleet to escort, but you need to have it ready when the Exile's repair completes).
However, you blindly did that. You reached a homeworld while searching something you should have ignored (or cared about earlier). However, with no supporting fleet and your previous wandering, the Exile was of course "tired" (50% health before entering the homeworld is bad... very-very bad), alone, and the AI had time to rage up significantly.
And then, once in your dug and sealed grave, you managed to dig deeper. You called the Exile back. Even delaying its progression toward the homeworld to wait for fleet reinforcement is a high price. Calling it back is death wish.
Let's imagine you didn't turned rebelling colonies on. Let's say you scouted earlier and intentionally went to the homeworld without wandering. You were already screwed. But still, retreat wasn't an option. The Exile is in reach of the exo wormhole: you go for it. Even if you have a small chance of success, retreat is no chance of survival.
And you were so focused on your Exile's survival you didn't even noticed your empire was crumbling. :P
That AAR was hilarious. Thanks a lot for sharing.
I hope that !!fun!! self-dug grave will serve other players to learn all the lethal mistakes that shouldn't be done when handling an Exodian Blade.
You were warned: It's sharp.
;)
Misery:
--- Quote from: Mánagarmr on July 18, 2016, 03:54:11 am ---Hah, lol. I accidently reported this post instead of another one. I'm sorry mate xD
Nice writeup!
--- End quote ---
Well, that explains that, then.
I musta stared at that report for like 5 minutes wondering what the problem was.
Pumpkin:
--- Quote from: Misery on July 18, 2016, 07:00:42 am ---
--- Quote from: Mánagarmr on July 18, 2016, 03:54:11 am ---Hah, lol. I accidently reported this post instead of another one. I'm sorry mate xD
Nice writeup!
--- End quote ---
Well, that explains that, then.
I musta stared at that report for like 5 minutes wondering what the problem was.
--- End quote ---
At least you read a funny piece of AAR, didn't you?
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