Yup, just did it legit
Here's the save a couple minutes before it's over; you can try for yourself if you like.
The save is extremely extremely down to the wire. It really feels like that final battle in ender's game.
The total game took about 5 hours (more in real time, I reloaded a lot).
It's a 10 planet map, there are no handicaps or cheats, but I did turn off waves. The AI are both level 10, one is mad bomber one is tank.
I generated a map where my one homeplanet (I don't know how the other guy started with 8 home planets, that would have made things really easy for me to have that many resources) bordered all 9 of them, which helped because it took out all possibilities of ions (level 10 AIs have 3 ion IIs in their core planet otherwise...)
With 9 wormholes in I put about 30 basic mlrs turrets around my command post and used a strike force of 170 fighters in one transport (researched that off the bat) to quickly knock out the 7 non-home planets. The transports drew fire from the special ops post so I never lost a single fighter. After I capped all the non home planets I researched command station III (resources are really scarce, didn't't want to wait so long for things to trickle in), fighters III bombers III, and beam canon I (which turned out to be useless I'll explain later).
There were no zenith powers which would have made things a lot easier, but anyways I resourced up, then my attack plan was to wear out 8-9 core guard posts on each planet by cheesing them with transports; I would send in one as a decoy which would just about instantly die, and the other 2 would flee the bullets and drop capped ships of fighters I/II on the core guard posts. Core guard posts don't take bonus damage from bombers so fighters are the great obvious choice, they do more basic damage and they are a lot cheaper and faster to build. It takes 2-3 volleys from the 300'ish fighters to kill a guard post. I couldn't take out all 10 because a couple were under core force fields.
Even after I took out 8-9 core guard posts, both ai home planets had reinforced with about 3000 core ships plus they kept attaching more lightning turrets and warping in mark IVs from their exo galaxy wormholes. I was at quite a loss, I dumped about 20 or so lightning warheads into the weakest planet then I changed my mind this wasn't working, and my resources/knowledge are simply too low because of the 10 planet map and also because both homeplanets were immediately on alert.
So I say: the enemy's gate is down.
I fill out my cap in fighters/bombers mark I/II/III/IV and I happen to have a core fabricator for bombers too which is nice. They all load into 5 or 6 transports. I have 5 or 6 more as decoy transports.
I launch a nuclear warhead into the first AI planet, the reason being I needed to get rid of a horrendous pile of MKIVs buzzing about the command stations. This also has the happy effect of angering about 2000 core ships around the wormhole.
How did I survive that with crap technology/knowledge/resources?
Hello lightning warheads for defense.
When they warp in a bunch at a time, I detonate a warhead on them. Whoosh there goes 500 core ships at a time, no problem =)
So I defeat the massive backwash after the nuke, but before they're even quite dead I simulatenously send my transport fleet into their homeworld.
The decoys run away to draw any ships they can, while the core command station is pretty free of ships thanks to the nuke (for some reason they were gating in MKIVs from the exo galaxy to the command station, not reinforcing with cores which helped a lot. Also for some reason they didn't build any fighters at all, which helped let me bombers survive longer).
The enemy's gate is down - my 500'ish bombers and 500'ish fighters blow the living heck out of the command post, I have like 100 bombers left.
But RUH ROH. Now the "real" backwash comes, all of the remaining troops and 5 zeniths >_< I warhead on their IVs/Vs again, but the zeniths get my command station. So I reload and this time I build anti starship arachnids from a fabricator and I have the loop on my dock set to fighters. I barely kick out those super deadly zeniths - they manage to blow out my force field and scratch my command post before my swarm of fighters and arachnids barely knock them out.
One AI world down.
I rebuild the tractor defenses - scrap them and put them next to the second AI home planets wormhole, rebuild my troops, very standard prepping like I did for the first home world.
I try the same tactic, Nuke + defend against backwash with warheads + transport decoys + go for the station, but it keeps failing because this time one of their core guard posts is right next to their command station under a bubble and they have a ton of cores there that don't get angered by the nuke because they are too far away. I can break the shield but I only scratch the station before all the troops swarm in on me, even when I try transport decoying and all that lovely stuff. I suppose I could have managed it with better micro, or I suppose I could have done it smarter by rushing the core guard post earlier with tons of bombers to get rid of the force field, but the solution I come up with is simply try to brute force it - I resurrect mr artillery golem.
And there's where the save starts - the final crazy assault on the second ai homeworld.
They have reinforced after the nuke with a lot of IVs on the command post so there's some resistance there, but somehow I manage to mickey mouse it anyways. The bomber/fighter swarm crack the shield, at which point I order the artillery golem to assist and fire upon the station.
I had to reload a couple times to get it right, one time their damn engineers repaired the station to full in between my artillery shot -_-a but somehow I manage to crack the homeworld and get the double godlike achievement =)
I could go back to a previous save and time my nuking and decoys a little tighter so there weren't any reinforcements to get a less risky last save, but I'm just so relieved I did it and happy it's over. Not looking back, I'm burnt out.
