Reports of failure

[Ktoff]

Hey Guys,

I recently found my way back to AI War and find that the game has change quite a bit. I used to do fairly well with 7.3 AIs (very VERY rare wins, but doing good till late mid/early late game, mostly dying before I kill the second home world).

So for my first game I go with all the expansions, no options, everything normal, two 7 random easy/moderate AIs. I fail to build a lot of towers and rely on my fleet for defense and get eaten within the first 20 minutes of the game by a wave of Neinzul Tigers (see http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9488.0.html). So just now I tried again, this time with improved (?) strategy and lost again after 17:31 minutes. Until I find back to my feet, I will try to make medium detailed reports on my failed attempts not to suck :-)

So same AI types, but this time a home world with only 2 Wormholes. I carefully build 10 Tractor turrets, a small minefield (around 15) and a grav turret around each wormhole. Additionally I place a mixture of turrets (all in all 30-40) and start building my fleet (MkII Fighters/Bombers, MkI frigates and autocannons) and add a small starship to the mix.

The first wave is announced around 12 minutes into the game. 170 frigates a starship (turns out to be leech), 5 Spire tractor platforms and a starship (turns out to be also a leech). I focus my fleet on bombers (for the frigates) and tank my economy until the waves arrive.

The frigates are stopped at the wormhole, and the starships slowly (thanks grav turrets) advance, my fleet greets and engages them. Heavy losses and a devastated turret field later, most of my remaining fleet is held by the tractor platforms. The tractor platforms then fly off with my ships in tow back through the wormhole and leave the rest of my meager fleet to be reclaimed or killed.

Not long afterwards my base goes up in flames while Mk III ships pour in through the wormhole (backwash from a Mk III world  that my stolen fleet involuntarily visitied?) and a raid to an unknown planet by a raid engine is anouncend.

A well.... Once more unto the breach.....

[Ktoff]

Next try, same settings, same map, more towers and this time an onslaught of MLRS towers as a reaction to the announcement of the first waves (fighters and raiders). My bombers shot down the starships and the rest of the fleed killed the other small ships.

I survived the first 20 minutes (well, 19, but still)!

So this is the situation I am dealing with, both Neighbors are next to MkIII worlds. On the bright side, the last planet in the cul de sac has an Adv. Res. station :-)

My first expansion will thus be moving to the left and clean out my backyard. We'll see how that goes... tomorrow :-)

[Mánagarmr]

Ouch! You must've done something to the RNG. It really hates you xD

[Ktoff]

Well I did point out, that its mother could lose some weight... :-)

Status:
1:40 into the game
5 planets (adjacent planets to home world and "back-alley")
Stable economy
as of yet not fully fortified front-line (FF over the Wormhole, fleet and a few towers).
More complete update later on, I'm off for a long weekend.

It appears I am back in. However, there seems to be a lot of new stuff (never played Spire expansion before)

I encountered Spire-rams. They look real dangerous, but the AI is too stupid to use them properly. I had a wave of 40 of those buggers coming in and they wrecked my tractor beam turrets, but left my high-value targets alone.

Also, what are Superterminals and Core- Shield nodes?

Any recommendations on which Spirecrafts to build? I have a couple of MkI-III asteroids.

By comparison with 3.120, does the game run slow? Not in regular speed, but when I ramped up the speed, back in the day :-), it used to go really fast, at least 5-10 times normal speed. Now when I ramp up the speed to +10, it runs slightly faster, but maybe at twice the rate. The rate also seems to vary...

Finally, is it intended, that the initial waves are much harder than the rest of the early game waves?
1. wave both AIs with each 250-350 ships + starship (600 ships + 2 starships)
2.+ waves 40-200 ships per wave, depending on the type (plus starship).

The first wave was a real hard attack in all 3 games i recently started, although I cannot comment on the subsequent waves for the first two games :-)

[Coppermantis]

Also, what are Superterminals and Core- Shield nodes?

Superterminals are like Datacenters, but when the planet they're on is captured by you, they will steadily decrease AI Progress, but as it does this, more and more powerful ships will gradually spawn from it. There are a variety of ways to effectively use them. They also increase AIP Floor, which is the minimum that the AIP can be at.

Core-Shield nodes protect all guard posts on the AI Home planet. The guard posts must be destroyed before the Command station can be destroyed. With all types of Shield Nodes (B, C, D, and E-Secondary, as soon as one is destroyed all of the same type will self-destruct. For example, if I blow up a D-Secondary node all the other D-Secondaries will go away too. A-Prime nodes are the oppsite, requiring all but one to be destroyed before the last one self destructs.

Also, the seeding is as follows (I think)

E-Secondary: Random
D-Secondary: Any planet with a Warp Counterattack Guard Post
C-Secondary (I forgot. It could be Warp counterattack instead of D, but I'm fuzzy here.)
B-No idea
A-Anything with an ARS

Any recommendations on which Spirecrafts to build? I have a couple of MkI-III asteroids.

If you have a lot of problems with stuff like exo waves and CPAs, martyrs are good for taking out swarms of ships like lighting warheads do.

A pair of Mk. II Spirecraft scouts can scout the entire galaxy if used right.

Siege Towers work well enough as basically mini-fortresses.

Rams can make short work of high-health targets like guard posts, golems and spirecraft

(Just a few of my common choices. Others have good uses as well.)

By comparison with 3.120, does the game run slow? Not in regular speed, but when I ramped up the speed, back in the day :-), it used to go really fast, at least 5-10 times normal speed. Now when I ramp up the speed to +10, it runs slightly faster, but maybe at twice the rate. The rate also seems to vary...

I wasn't there for 3.120, but It seems to go fast enough for me (At blitz speed and normal). I dunno.

Finally, is it intended, that the initial waves are much harder than the rest of the early game waves?
1. wave both AIs with each 250-350 ships + starship (600 ships + 2 starships)
2.+ waves 40-200 ships per wave, depending on the type (plus starship).

It depends on difficulty. On low (6-7) difficulties, as long as I keep AIP low, the early waves are only in the double digits, sometimes in the low triple digits. The early waves are often the hardest, since your fleet and defenses aren't well built yet.

The first wave was a real hard attack in all 3 games i recently started, although I cannot comment on the subsequent waves for the first two games :-)
[/quote]

[TechSY730]

Just as a consolation, the game IS harder than the 3.0 days. This was intentional by the devs, as the 3.0 days was the low point in the difficulty. Now the game is now closer to the intended difficulty, though admittidly, there are concerns that the pacing of the midgame has been thrown off as a result (aka, the midgame may now be too hard, even by the standards of this game).

[Cyborg]

3.189 is clearly a golden build, however. It's worth having both copies just for the freedom you have to do what you want, and there is still a challenge on the higher levels and with a lot of the secondary options.

[Ktoff]

A quick update, before I update with pics (and maybe a save) tonight.

I am roughly 7 hours into the game and have a well consolidated chunk of 9 planets and have done extensive scouting.

The scouting turned out to be really difficult. One AI (the vicious raider) has a tachyon guard at EVERY fricking wormhole making it hard to get much deeper than two planets with any type of scouts (even if the MkIII scouts are quite helpful). My scouting strategy so far is to kill all the tachyon guardians (fleet of MkI and MkII autocannons, fly in low power and then kill until they die). That way I carved extensive scouting routes and have found all of the ARS and a MkV factory.

I have also found (and liberated) the Dyson sphere which happily spams gatlings which are now patrolling my planets (a few are still out killing stuff, but as soon as one reaches my cluster it stays with me). The Dyson is located quite nicely within two jumps of my frontline and has done wonders to clean up my frontyard. Furthermore I also located the first AI homeworld, the second must be in an unscouted pocket which is hard to get to.

The next order of business is to capture two ARS and the planet in the middle (the three planets are lined up, and the middle one has a golem i think), reconsolidate and start estabilishing a forward base to prepare the attack on the homeworlds. I fear there will be some extensive "path carving" before I manage to mount an attack, but it feels like this round is winnable.

However, the counter-strike waves striking deep in your backyard are really a pony. I had one wiping out three planets before being stopped at the home planet. And the mini-spirerams make it almost impossible to enjoy stuff like the Ion cannons. They just go straight through the FF and kill my nice toys... I wonder if and how i'll be able to hold the MkV fabricator. Killing all the warpgates is probably a good first step.

[Ktoff]

As promised an update with a picture (and for those interested with a save). I would have rearranged the planets but I forgot how, blue is my homezone, two entrypoints, only one of which has a warpgate left (obviously the planet with murder in its name). Red diamond indicates the location of the Dyson sphere and the green oval indicates a chain of three planets where I just popped the command station to get to the two ARS with the golem in the middle. P5 indicates a MkIV Fabricator and P9 an ARS.

Shortly after I started colonizing down there the cross planet attack was announced and now I'll stall because I do not want to risk defending a half-finished golem in a place where I can't fortify. I'll probably also destroy the command station on Leorivo to avoid getting waves in my new 'home'. The planet had the ARS but no further appeal (not even a single resource, except the Spire asteroids).

A question about unlocks: I just got my newest unlock (Z Shredders) and they immediately unlocked to MkII. Why? (not that I am complaining).

So now off to see how the CP hits me :-)

[Hearteater]

Because ARS always unlocks Mark I and II of the ship type .

[Ktoff]

Oh...thanks :-)

I wonder if they always did that or if I just didn't remember that they did....

[Wanderer]

A quick update, before I update with pics (and maybe a save) tonight.

I am roughly 7 hours into the game and have a well consolidated chunk of 9 planets and have done extensive scouting.

I'd probably restart in frustration at that point.  I'm usually at that point within 2 hours before the rest of the systems have time to resupply to ungodly levels.  At that rate you'll be hitting fully reinforced core worlds without ever having alerted them.

One AI (the vicious raider) has a tachyon guard at EVERY fricking wormhole making it hard to get much deeper than two planets with any type of scouts (even if the MkIII scouts are quite helpful).

That's pretty normal.  Most of them do that.  Your best bet for heavy scouting is to get a Scout IV and let it loose for a while on auto-explore.

I have also found (and liberated) the Dyson sphere which happily spams gatlings which are now patrolling my planets (a few are still out killing stuff, but as soon as one reaches my cluster it stays with me).

Yeah, Dysons are handy patrollers for the back system, they handle minor incursions quite handily.

However, the counter-strike waves striking deep in your backyard are really a pony. I had one wiping out three planets before being stopped at the home planet. And the mini-spirerams make it almost impossible to enjoy stuff like the Ion cannons. They just go straight through the FF and kill my nice toys... I wonder if and how i'll be able to hold the MkV fabricator. Killing all the warpgates is probably a good first step.

A) Gravity Turrets are your best friend here, use them well to protect those one of kind assets.
B) If you kill ALL the warpgates, you're going to end up hosed because you won't know which world is going to get the waves.  Kill all but one so you can control the whipping boy locations.
C) Ion Cannons are weak in our hands.  They annoying as heck when you're thumping a system because we always have MK 1/2 ships, but once you break the 730 barrier in AI everything they own is MK III.
D) CounterStrikes are meant to be painful and force a decision.  Use a few extra ff's at a counterstrike target's wormholes out and get some grav turrets up.  If you can slam a fortress or two into place and probably about 1/2 your fleet in defense.  You've got 15 minutes, use them well.

[Hearteater]

Don't forget Ion Cannons now actually do damage to higher mark ships.  They don't insta-kill, but at least they aren't pointless.

As for scouting, you can generally get a full system further by destroying the tachyon guardian right on the other side of warp points in your systems.  Optionally, put all your Mark I&II scouts in a transport and send 2 additional empty transports through, one in front and one behind the scouts' transport.  I can generally get the transports through two systems and if you are careful to get them die outside of any tachyon range, the scouts are perfectly safe.  Then proceed to scout from there.

Also, when leaving the enemy systems manually position your scouts so the boosted scouts are in front, at max boost range, and go through the warp point first.  Using this means you always get half your scouts safely through each warp point.  This is generally more trouble than it is worth, but I do it sometimes if I just need to see one system further.

[Ktoff]

9 planets after two hours, that's crazy fast, but in any case, I like to take it a bit slower. This however sometimes leads me to roadblocks of superreinforced planets. For now, at least on of the homeworlds looks quite calm with roughly 120-160 ships on homeworld/Core worlds.

By "killing all the warpgates" I meant "killing all the warpgates leading to the fabricator", I don't want my perfectly good killing grounds to go to waste :-)

Manually positioning scouts sounds like a lot of hassle, but it's nice to know there are options available. I was usually already complaining if I had to move the scouts manually around the planet because of one stupidly positioned tachyon emitter....

In the meantime the CPA has hit, and either I was lucky or the CPAs have become a lot less scary....

[Ranakastrasz]

Raid starships, Assuming a lack of gravity effects, work quite well if you need to remove some tachyon guardians, even if its a few planets deep. Varies OFC, and higher marks are more effective.