First off - I love this game. The idea catched my eye some years ago and while I liked the idea, I just couldn't get anywhere. Every now and then I tried to start a new game and I never got really far. This thing was REALLY frustrating. Not the game itself - Rather the fact that I liked the game and absolutely couldn't get into it.
I understood the concept, I searched through this forums and still... Years of unfinished games on various difficulty settings. Then, a week ago, everything changed
I started a new game out of the thin air, after a long pause in which I didn't play at all. Both AI's where vanilla 7, 0 AI progress per minute, the youngling firefly as my starting ships and some various stuff enabled - Most notably the roaming conclaves on 4/10 and broken golems (easy). Mapstyle was the "X"-style, with my homeplanet a bit off center. Number of planets: 60.
Interestingly enough my game went pretty nicely and I could use pretty much everything I learned in these forums. The unleashing of free roaming neinzul ships (mark I to IV unlocked) and the set-up of some heavy defenses that actually work (kahuna-style) remain as my favorite tricks.
I took over the planet next to my homeworld, set up some defenses on that planet and began scouting, while neutering planets and destroying tachyon guard posts on the way. I wanted to take only the minimum amount of planets and avoid any increase of AIP when not absolutely necessary. After a short amount of time, I run out of energy - Bad. At that point I unlocked the economy station mark II and... Wow. So much energy. So much defense.
After taking two planets in the enemy territory, I began to dislike my strategy of a archipelago-empire-style. These planets got a minimal amount of defense that was required to stop the AI - But not the roaming enclaves. These guys... I don't like them. They harrassed my far out planets and in the end, let me fortify even these two planets that wouldn't need so much turrets otherwise.
After seeing how effective my defense was, I changed all my plans. Over the next hours, I took the complete center of the X-map and fortified all 4 entry-points. One points was directly at my homeworld.
After that, it was a huntdown of all the AIP reducers, hacking some stuff and eventually, neutering the coreworlds and killing the AI homeworlds. I'm so damn happy to finally beat a game of AI War... Yeah
Some random thoughts and stuff I observed within my campaign:
Broken golems (easy): I won't choose this again. The golems felt VERY powerfull and after having three of these, I stopped using them. They just felt overpowered at my AIP. Next time it's going to be broken golems medium or hard.
AIP: Right before neutering the coreworld of the second homeworld, my AIP was at something like 180. I killed every datacenter, I took down all 4 co-processors simultaneously and... The superterminal wasn't hacked yet. The X-map let me have a solid, connected empire and still... The AIP was so LOW. I could've taken two more planets and hack the superterminal for even more stuff to fight the AI.
Knowledge: I got a solid amount of toys unlocked (Mini-fortress, Heavy beam cannon mark I, Needler turrets up to mark IV, Laser and MLRS turrets up to mark II, normal and hardened forcefields mark II, youngling firefly up to mark IV, leech and raid starships up to mark IV, economy command mark II, grav turrets mark I and engineers mark II - I think that's all). The big thing is - I didn't take the spire archives. If I took these two archives, I would've gotten even more knowledge - Wow.
Forcefields: Never enough of them. NEVER. I unlocked hardened forcefileds mark I & II and the normal ones mark II. I still didn't have enough... But that's ok. I think that my placement wasn't really optimal.
Roaming enclaves: Never again. In the end I had aroung 26 enclave starships at my homeplanet - nice. At the same time, enemy enclave starships attacked all the time and gave me a heartattack because of the fact that planets are shown under attack.
In the end... I just wanted to thank again for this wonderful game. All the arcengames have their unique touch but this one just makes my day. Also - Thanks to all you guys. If I couldn't sneak around in these forums, I would'nt know nearly as much about the many tactics that this game offers to the player.
Thanks
