This ai is awesome!
I have been playing the same map a few times now (grid map, 1033691406, ai level 7, no time-related aip, mining golems off, enemies: Mad Bomber, Vicious Raider). Because the ai keeps beating me! Not by help of cpa's, but just by ordinary waves. What happens is this:
First time I played this map, I bought myself a Zenith Power Plant right away, as I wanted to prepare for all the nice Zenith Reserves nearby. This was a great mistake, game over in about half an hour.
Next time around I did not buy anything that would upset the ai. Instead I conquered most adjacent planets and erased the remaining adjacent warp gates, and began waiting for the trader to arrive. But he didn't. In the meantime I had an human colony invisibility loss situation, so I thought I would go and fix that while waiting, rather than accept an inconvenient ai progress jump. And so I did: I saved the humans and bought some of their nice ships. This must have annoyed the ai extremely, because he began sending wave after wave after wave, and finally he destroyed my command station on said planet. He kept sending waves, and kicked me out of the next system, and the next, and suddenly I had no more reserves, and no more resources, while the ai set course towards my home planet. So I decided that this game was lost.
In the game I am playing now I have un-ticked the human revolts in the game lobby. My goal is to build up an economy, so I can afford to crack open some of those Zenith reserves. So I have conquered all adjacent planets to my motherplanet and nerfed all other entrances thus creating a safe little planet cluster, leaving open only one way in, which I have filled up with all kinds of turrets. This way in is also my way out into the rest of the system. So when I was ready, ie. in possession of a full fleet mk. II, and having built the first two tiers of the Dreadnoughts and the Riots, plus Lights, I went in. The objective is a planet with 9 (nine) wormholes. It has no mk. level, and it was only protected by some 300 ships. Piece of cake, I thought, AIP was only 120.
Within a minute after entering, there were suddenly not 300 ships, but 700. I killed them, but before I had finished them off, I got another alert, 3-400 ships in 50 seconds. And before I had finished that off, I got another wave, and again another, and again... - and it hasn't stopped yet! After half an hour I realized that I had to do something about this, so I sent in a mobile builder and began to build up some tower defences around my entrance, while my fleet continued to ward off the constant attacks. I had continuous casualties both among turrets and ships, so I decided to build a forward command station. I built an FF, that immediately got shot away, but eventually, one and a half hour after entering the system, I got one finished and built my command station underneath it. I still expected that after a lot of fighting there would be some kind of a brief lull, so I could consolidate and move the fighting to one of the ai's planets.
Now it is two hours later, and no lull is in sight. In these two hours I have continually warded off waves of 300-800 ships, mostly mk. IIIs. I chose parasites as bonus ship, so I have got myself a nice amount of mk. IIIs by now. The typical countdown is one minute or less, and very often a new wave is announced before the previous one has launched. Several times I have had three waves on queue, plus the occasional cpa. But the cpa's are not a special problem, as they tend to be just another enemy wave on the same planet. During this time I managed to clean up 'my' new planet only once, for about five seconds, before the next wave hit. Most of the time there is immobilized enemy vehicles all over the place, I have some 50 spider turrets and I bought an Ion Cannnon mk. II when the trader dropped by. The trader seems not to be able to find my home planet, though.
Anyway, this has so far lasted for almost four hours, that is: four hours of continuous fighting without a pause. AIP is only 142. I had to go to bed (must work), so I just made a save in the middle of fighting. And this is where I am now, watching the situation while the game is on pause.
My plan A: I will fight and wait for another half hour for a lull in the fighting, and then go take out first one of the planets that creates all the waves, then another etc. If no lull occurs after half an hour, I contemplate plan B, ie. the following desperate measure:
I keep a small mk. I fleet, bolstered with some conquered autocannons and raptors, to deal with the occasional wave that is not emerging on the problem planet. With this fleet I intend to make a raid on the nearest Zenith Reserves structure. What this means is, that all my defences will power down, as I have got no Zenith Power Plant. This means again, that I will have to rely on my main fleet only for defence, while the Zenith fleet hopefully kicks some enemy ass. I realize that in this way I may loose the game. But the alternative is fighting forever: If I concentrate fully, I can beat his attacks off, but there is no way I can at the same time go over to the offensive without more ships. I have no more towers, there are no more ships to build, no more knowledge, and ressources are low, so I cannot build ordinary power stations enough to unleash a Zenith fleet. But I guess I'll have to do it anyway.
I'll let you know what happens.
This ai is awesome!!!
