So this is not going to be a blow by blow report as others have kind of done here. I want to do one, but I kinda want to save it for the difficulty 10 games I want to eventually get good at so that the veterans can enjoy something ( hopefully). I have heavily enjoyed reading many after-action reports, especially by Rockybst! Those were my favorites.
That being said, AI War is the most intense strategy game I have ever played. My actual game time was 3 hours and 40 minutes but my time played on that game was 17 hours.
17 hours!
That should tell you just how much time went into pausing and planning and reading.
I loved it too! I had two easier AI's at difficulty 7.6, had all AI plots at 4/10, were schizophrenic, and I revealed their types to me, but they did not have any other options like all all CPAs and nuclear command, both were random easier x2 personalities:
1st AI - Mine Enthusiast/ Turtle
2nd AI - Fortress Baron/Train Master
I played as Normal+Champion, neither side had any handicaps. I had all the options and expansions turned on at 4/10 and all others were enabled.
The game was played on a 40 planet grid. So each wormhole had four connections, each new planet I conquered had two-three new ingress points as I moved.
The game was very choatic due to how much I had going on in the name of minor factions. My biggest surprises came from Neinzul Rocketry Corps launching surprise nukes at my planets from the roaming Nomad worlds. I lost many of my most protected economic worlds just by a change of wormholes. The next biggest loss of my planets came from Hatred starships spawned by the Vengeance Generator, damn those dark spires!
The biggest and most exciting portion of the game came at about an hour in. I had four exo-galactic strike forces headed to me ( two from two broken golem hard 4/10 and one from spire ships and another from alt champ progress 4/10). These were layered in such a way that I had to turtle up and really make sure I was prepared. I died dozens of times trying to defend myself. At one point I lost every world except for my homeworld and a distant frontier outpost.
Overall, once I got my artillery, armored, and botnet golems defending my worlds, I was set. I still had to build an armored warhead and multiple lightning warheads to help fend off the rare hunter/killer or implosion guardians that devestated me a couple of times, but the golems really made the game possible.
The final assault was not as hard as I was expecting, but it still took a lot of planning. I chose to go with a spirecraft heavy assault, using spire shield-bearers, spire translocator ships to keep the riff-raff at bay, rams for the shields/structures, and martyrs for the anti-fleet. I once got my final assault pushed back by keeping a Core V world on alert too long. This made me unlock the warp jammer command station as my last unlock. Totally worth it.
If you have read this far, I hope you can appreciate a noob's excitement at finally being blooded by this game. Arcen Games makes truly innovative titles and AI war is beautiful and cunning and responsible for making me stay up two nights in a row till 9 am just to see the "You Won!" title.
