That was a wild ride at the end.
I'm not even sure how the AI could have been tweaked to stop you other than making warheads less effective... but considering you had several duds that wouldn't really make sense.
I think it could be possible to beat the homeworlds without using warheads. I'd actually like to try to do it at some point but don't know when I'll have time. A game in a 20 planet map would probably be much quicker than in a map with 80 planets.
There are few things that made it quite easy:
-I got lucky with the seed and got 5 fabricators and a ZPG in easily capturable/defendable/hackable positions. On the other hand if they weren't in such easy positions I'd have probably hacked them anyway and it would have just taken more time.
-Salvage helped me a lot. I actually wanted the AI to attack my homeworld so I get as much salvage as possible (40%) without unlocking Mark III Logistical Command Stations which give 30%.
On the other hand if I didn't get so much salvage I'd have probably just waited to get enough metal (notorious
netflix time) so I don't think that's good either. Perhaps salvage could be less powerful and there could way be more Distribution Nodes around the galaxy. If the player wants to get things done faster he/she would have to destroy the Distribution Nodes which would give tons of metal but also increase AIP. In a normal game with normal waves (I had cross planet waves enabled in this game) I'd have gotten even more salvage. Or perhaps not more but a more steady income since the waves would have all spawned on my planets after which vast majority of them would have been destroyed. Surely some could have gotten away as threat.
-Turrets might not cost enough knowledge.
That AI response is what happens when you take out the HCS of a Vengeful AI.
Oh, my. I guess he's lucky that he didn't try to attack the AI homeworlds in the order he originally wanted, eh? That'd've made the game more... interesting.
I'd have lost the game with 100% certainty if I did that. Then I'd have had to reload and destroy the AI homeworlds in this order. I guess the only way to "survive" it is to win the game before it gets to your planets. Which leads to a question "how does one win x/Vengeful // y/Vengeful". I guess in that situation you would have to neuter both AI homeworlds and their core planets if necessary and then destroy both AI HCSs at once. You'd have to endure the continuous exogalactic strike forces the whole time.
I almost chose Alarmist/Vengeful instead of Vanguard/Alarmist btw. So yeah, then I'd have had to do that^^
I wonder what kind of a response Vanguard/Vengeful would send. Would it just be huge amounts of Guardians?
Hmmm, maybe multiple MkIII Armored Warhead... Helps? 3 motherships adds up to 24M HP, which is less than the damage of an Armored Warhead III...
I loaded the "I WIN.sav" again and destroyed Vengeful's Home Command Station again and calculated the total amount of health in the response (which seemed to be a bit smaller this time): 181.516.000. The total amount of damage Armored Warheads do is 135.000.000. So after the warheads there would be 181.516.000-135.000.000=46.516.000 health left.
Normal Lightning Warheads have a cap on how much damage they can do per unit (
I just realized that's why they barely scratched the Avenger) so I'm going to use that cap in my calculations.. 3.600.000.. I actually don't know how big spire fleet you can get in the spire campaign but warheads are nowhere near enough to stop that.
Stopping it MIGHT be possible if you first managed to use full caps of all Armored and Lightning Warheads when the response would still be a couple of hops away from you. Then you would focus build an additional (fourh) Mark III Armored Warhead before the response arrives. Focus building it that fast would probably require Mark III Engineers. You would also have to be quite certain about which direction the response is coming from and have scout coverage at least 2 hops in every direction. After the warheads a defensive beachhead with Force Fields on top of the wormhole where the response is heading to might help a little bit. After all of those warheads
and the fourth Mark III Armored Warhead the response would still have 17.916.000 health left which is 3,98 Armored Golems. Stopping that without any warheads might be possible...
...Oh man I actually wanna try that now but don't know when I'll have the time. But once again a 20 planet map would be much quicker. It would depend on the AI types too.. RaidEngine/Vengeful // RaidEngine/Vengeful on a 20 planet map. Talk about fast and furious.
