A Break

[Kahuna]

lmfao you have 85 planets. welcome to 7,6 difficulty haha.

[keith.lamothe]

Simply unstoppable   The AI's change from "stop getting more reinforcements past X AIP" to "past X AIP, shift that strength from reinforcements to offensive stuff" may be coming soon   Though most of the high-diff games I see don't cross that threshold anyway.

Interesting on them ignoring the fab on a neutral planet (I'm assuming you'd taken the planet, and then lost it again?), I'll make a note to look into that.

[Kahuna]

most of the high-diff games I see don't cross that threshold anyway.

hmm in my last 10/10 game I had 444 AIP when I won the game. Didn't use any nukes. The AIP really ramps up when you start destroying the Core Guard Posts and spamming Warheads.

[keith.lamothe]

True, but what was it before the endgame gambit?  And how long did the game run once you started the real homeworld assaults?  Iirc, that's a situation where the AI doesn't get enough time to use its newly-ramped-up AIP, and if it did the player's pretty doomed.

[Kahuna]

True, but what was it before the endgame gambit?  And how long did the game run once you started the real homeworld assaults?

Hm let's see.. copy pasting the save backups into the AI War saves folder..

AIP - In game time - Situation
104 - 11:28:18 - Before AI Home World assault.
184 - 14:23:59 - AI 2's Core Guard Posts destroyed.
310 - 16:14:05 - AI 1's (both AIs') Core Guard Posts destroyed. Only AI Home Command Stations left.

[keith.lamothe]

Interesting, nearly a 5 hour assault phase, though you'd only passed the reinforcements cap-AIP (which is 180 on diff 10, iirc) in the last two hours.  Still, that would have started to hurt had it put the "lost" reinforcements towards offense.

Is that a normal length for that phase, or did the core-guard-post-death exos cause it to take a lot longer than it did before?  Faulty mentioned those really bogging him down in another game.  I'm wondering if maybe it should only send that response-exo after every 3 (maybe 4?) core guard post deaths, but that many times bigger.  I want to avoid HW double-kills (starting from no core guard posts down) that take less than, say, 45 minutes (on high-diff) so the AI has some chance to respond.  I also want it to be an extremely dangerous phase of the game.  But I don't want it to be unduly long, either.

[Kahuna]

Mostly I didn't even notice the core-guard-post-death exos.. I think my defenses auto stopped them LOL. First I didn't even remember Core Guard Posts send exos on death. Then a bit later I had maybe 2 or 3 troublesome core-guard-post-death exos.

I think it was the CPAs that slowed me down. CPAs come every ~2 hours or so and defeating them takes like 30.. sometimes 60 minutes. Carriers aren't exactly the fastest ships in the game (which is good) so it takes a bit time for them to arrive. And when they arrive destroying the ~18000 ships or whatever can take a while.

I had a CPA before, after and between all 3 phases. Before the AI home world assault, after neutering the first AI home world, after neutering the second AI home world.. and while I was grinding the Mark V Force Fields protecting the 2 AI home command stations.

I had to be well prepared for the CPAs before they even launched.. then they arrived and then I stopped them.. and then I had to rebuild and recover. All of this took time. Also I didn't want to take any chances. I could (and maybe should) have used Warheads to stop the CPAs faster (I didn't use Warheads until the ~20000 ship CPA).

[keith.lamothe]

AIP 1839. Waves contain 500-2000 fleetships and 15-50 starships.

Gotta ask: how do you kill 50 MkIV Zenith Starships (without superweapons) before they do something unpleasant?  Or has it not rolled a solid-zenith wave during this phase of the game?


@Kahuna: so basically the CPAs are the only serious threat to Super-Cat defenses?  The waves and core-guard-post-exos and whatnot are just to keep you honest and feed the salvage engine?

[Kahuna]

@Kahuna: so basically the CPAs are the only serious threat to Super-Cat defenses?  The waves and core-guard-post-exos and whatnot are just to keep you honest and feed the salvage engine?

I'm afraid to say "yes".. who knows what might happen (AI Golem that actually shoots Mark V H/Ks?).

-1200 ship waves will be laughed at and auto stopped by my defenses.
-When wave sizes get around 2200 ships I will still occasionally laugh even though they start to hurt economically a little bit. These waves will mostly be auto stopped but now I start manually ordering x Turrets to shoot y ships.
-After that I may need to start paying more attention. More defensive unlocks.. Mark III Hardened Force Fields.. maybe Mark III Military Command Station (which I didn't unlock in my last 10/10. I probably should have though.).. Mark IV HBC etc. Also at this point I often stop being lazy and actually start using the normal Minefields. I might also unlock the EMP ones.

All of this depends on what ships the AI sends and what I have unlocked.

^^In my last 10/10 game I just started popping AI planets to get more Knowledge to unlock more Turrets. The Turret unlocks outweighed the AIP increase from popping the planets. At the end of the game an average wave had something like 6000 ships. At that point I started using 1 Mark I Lightning Warhead per wave. Defenses auto stopped the rest. I used my fleet for defending only when a CPA was announced.

[Faulty Logic]

Gotta ask: how do you kill 50 MkIV Zenith Starships (without superweapons) before they do something unpleasant?  Or has it not rolled a solid-zenith wave during this phase of the game?

Don't Zenith starships count as two? So if I'm getting 50 plasma siege starships, I'd only have gotten 25 zenith ones?

The chokepoint can easily handle 50 siege mkIVs, though. Keep in mind that I've unlocked EVERYTHING and all the fixed defenses (except mines) are in one place.

On the guard post exos, I basically had enough firepower to stomp the homeworld, but I had to kill the core posts one or two at a time, with half my fleet, while the rest waited at home. Then a CPA announced...


Kahuna, how much k do you usually spend on defensive unlocks?

[keith.lamothe]

I'm afraid to say "yes".. who knows what might happen (AI Golem that actually shoots Mark V H/Ks?).

If I do anything it won't be to make the game less fun   It might have that effect in the short term but we'd keep iterating.  If my goal were "get people off the 10/10 lawn" without regard for fun then here's a short list of units I could nerfhammer (area mines, riots, warheads, etc) and/or start include a bunch of superweapon-class AI units in core game responses.  But that'd hardly be sporting.

Note to self: make AI golem that shoots MkV HKs, each of which on-death-spawns 2 MkIV HKs and so forth...

-1200 ship waves will be laughed at and auto stopped by my defenses.
-When wave sizes get around 2200 ships I will still occasionally laugh even though they start to hurt economically a little bit. These waves will mostly be auto stopped but now I start manually ordering x Turrets to shoot y ships.
-After that I may need to start paying more attention. More defensive unlocks.. Mark III Hardened Force Fields.. maybe Mark III Military Command Station (which I didn't unlock in my last 10/10. I probably should have though.).. Mark IV HBC etc. Also at this point I often stop being lazy and actually start using the normal Minefields. I might also unlock the EMP ones.

All of this depends on what ships the AI sends and what I have unlocked.

All that sounds fine.

^^In my last 10/10 game I just started popping AI planets to get more Knowledge to unlock more Turrets. The Turret unlocks outweighed the AIP increase from popping the planets.

*Alarms Sound* Now that's a problem.  If a good player wants to run roughshod in the 7 to 8 range that's fine, but AIP needs be downright frightening on 10/10 (or even 9+) once you're past about 100 or 150.   If you're actually having an easier time defending with each planet taken then things really went off the rails somewhere.  My guess is when I made the reinforcements cease to benefit from AIP past that difficulty-specific threshold (180 in this case, iirc).  Without the AI's overall ship count gets much higher if you start running up the AIP, which tends towards either stalemate or a mass tipping point in a CPA or border aggression, etc.

I don't want to bring back stonewall-level reinforcements where progress is simply impossible.  I'd rather it focus on killing the player   And if you survive, then you can make progress, etc.

Don't Zenith starships count as two? So if I'm getting 50 plasma siege starships, I'd only have gotten 25 zenith ones?

Yea, I think it's something like that.  Anyway, yea, having all the turrets probably makes little things like double-digit quantities of mere starships beneath notice.

On the guard post exos, I basically had enough firepower to stomp the homeworld, but I had to kill the core posts one or two at a time, with half my fleet, while the rest waited at home. Then a CPA announced...

So if it only launched one every 3 or 4 core guard posts, but they were that much larger, that would allow a more reasonable pace?  It might also cause death, but can't have everything.

[Faulty Logic]

^^In my last 10/10 game I just started popping AI planets to get more Knowledge to unlock more Turrets. The Turret unlocks outweighed the AIP increase from popping the planets.

*Alarms Sound* Now that's a problem.

Why? There has to be a case where turrets make defense easier even considering the AIP, or people would never unlock turrets. It sounds like Kahuna has a single entrance for waves, but multiple for CPAs. In that case, it makes sense for capturing a planet and spending the k on turrets to make defense easier.

So if it only launched one every 3 or 4 core guard posts, but they were that much larger, that would allow a more reasonable pace?  It might also cause death, but can't have everything.

I don't think that would help. Maybe if the exos started at the attacked HW, so the fleet has a chance to deal with them?

[keith.lamothe]

^^In my last 10/10 game I just started popping AI planets to get more Knowledge to unlock more Turrets. The Turret unlocks outweighed the AIP increase from popping the planets.

*Alarms Sound* Now that's a problem.

Why? There has to be a case where turrets make defense easier even considering the AIP, or people would never unlock turrets.

Two things:

1) Early in the game, sure.  Not when you're already over 150 AIP on Diff 10.

2) The point isn't really ever for it to be beneficial (past, say, 10 planets in a serious game) to take planets for the specific and main reason to unlock more turrets.  The game may motivate them to want to take more planets for other reasons, and that AIP increase may lead to them needing to spend some portion of the acquired K on turrets.  But if your "auto defenses" can take 1200 ships and you're facing 1300-waves, but by taking another planet your auto defenses go up to handling 1500 ships but the waves only go up to 1400... then why not just take all the planets?

(looks at rest of thread)

Oh.

Anyway, if taking all that extra territory really made the CPAs sufficiently harder to take down, even if it made waves easier, that's one thing.  But it sounds like it was more of just a general boon to take extra territory.  Which seems more than strange on high-diff.  Anyway, I'm probably missing important bits of data

So if it only launched one every 3 or 4 core guard posts, but they were that much larger, that would allow a more reasonable pace?  It might also cause death, but can't have everything.

I don't think that would help. Maybe if the exos started at the attacked HW, so the fleet has a chance to deal with them?

I... thought they already started on the HW.  Oh, if there's more than one, yea.  Or maybe it was just casting wherever it pleased already.  Anyway, yea, I'll make a note of that.

[Kahuna]

Kahuna, how much k do you usually spend on defensive unlocks?

I'm at work (AI War forum) right now so I can't load the save file and check. Will do later.

^^In my last 10/10 game I just started popping AI planets to get more Knowledge to unlock more Turrets. The Turret unlocks outweighed the AIP increase from popping the planets.

*Alarms Sound* Now that's a problem.

When I started popping AI planets just to get more Knowledge the AIP was around 200. The higher the AIP is the less popping an AI planet affects the difficulty.
When AIP is 10 and you pop an AI planet the AIP increases to 30. So popping the planet tripled the AIP. If AIP is already 200 the AIP will ony increase to 220 so the effect feels much smaller. I mean if the wave sizes are already ~3000 ships and you're able to stop them the extra 300 ships most likely wont kill you. Also as I said I started using Warheads when the waves got really big.

It sounds like Kahuna has a single entrance for waves, but multiple for CPAs. In that case, it makes sense for capturing a planet and spending the k on turrets to make defense easier.

I had 2 entraces. 2 whipping boys. Both of them took waves and CPAs. Could have handled 3 but would have had to start using Warheads earlier. And more of course. It would have also made me unlock more Cloaker Starships.

2) The point isn't really ever for it to be beneficial (past, say, 10 planets in a serious game) to take planets

I had exactly 10 planets before the AI home world assault "10 planets" included the beachhead planets which I abandoned occasionally.

[keith.lamothe]

When I started popping AI planets just to get more Knowledge the AIP was around 200.

(...)

I had exactly 10 planets before the AI home world assault

So you had 200 AIP at some point before 10 planets?  Even with 10 that'd be 190 AIP (10 starting + 9*20 from captured planets).  Of course there are other AIP sources, I'm just curious which ones were operative here.  How many planets did you pop just for knowledge?

Or do you mean you started the territory-for-K thing after you started the AI HW assault?