Just lost a game on 6/6. I can often (more often than not?) win at this level but I'm still not very good at the game, despite having played it on and off for ages (since V.1.0 !)
The AI types were Sledgehammer and Grav Driller. They worked well in combination against me in this game; Sledge keeping the waves coming and Grav Driller stopping rapid redeployment of troops in my empire with all those annoying left over Grav Drills. I'm considering just copping the AIP increase next time I come up against this guy and destroying all the drills in my territory unless they are right up on the borders of my empire. The resources and energy boost is nice, but the slowdown effect is horrid. I tried building Logistic CS and Z-space time manipulators, but neither of those seemed to have any effect. I was expanding towrds the first of the two AI home worlds (had most of the galaxy actively scouted at this point), had taken about 15 planets of the 50 planet game. My game stalled when I came on a planet with an AI eye and a stealthed command post. My scout starships were combing the system for about 20 minutes with no luck, when suddenly I got a CS under attack warning. At some stage the AI must have unlocked Raiders (the AIP was in the high 200's) and a bunch of them (only 30 or so) had slipped past my outer perimeter and was harrassing a few of my inner worlds. Not only that but a large buildup of some 150 mixed MkIV ships were hammering a well turreted outpost planet. My homeworld was well defended but some of my core could have been better protected as I was sitting on a lot of unused turrets at this point. The Raiders managed to take out a command station on a system with a Grav Drill and Mk 1, 2 and 3 energy generator setup. I made the decision to send the bulk of my fleet to deal with the unexplained Mk IV attack, and sent some faster ships to deal with the raiders .My energy balance went red, and things started going rapidly downhill from there. I had a couple of golems up and running and I hurriedly switched them to standby power as I scrambled a fleet from a nearby system. My main fleet had now cleared the Mk. IV incursion, but Sledgehammer was sending more waves at now very weary defences. My cleanup fleet had to go via a Grav Drill system though, and the Raiders were well on their way to the next CS. They quickly took down the next system as well before my fleet could get there to defend, and my energy balance was now at about -100,000 and falling fast. I was madly going from planet to planet switching things willy nilly into low power mode, but frustrated because I couldn't find a very effective way of finding my most energy consuming assets and being able to selectively power them down. I'm pretty sure that if I had nipped my energy balance issues in the bud (before turrets and FF started coming down) the situation whereby I lost the game could well have been averted. Is there an easy way to sort all my assets in order of power consumption and selectively switch things off from a list? I need to learn how to do this quickly, as I'm sure I could have turned the situation around.
I never savescum, so the loss is a loss. I have learned that in recent builds waves are MUCH more potent. I remember sometime in v.3 or 4 the first wave on difficulty level 6 was a handful (like, 20 or so) fighters. In the game I just played, the first wave, was 200+ ships and a starship! I'm enjoying the greater challenge, and will have to defend my core worlds better in my next game. I also learned that losing a system with a Grav Drill, Mk 1,2 and 3 generators as well as a Economic CS can be a tragic event. Until I can beat level 6 consistently, I daren't even try lvl 7 AI (even though that seems to be considered the point where the AI get to play fair!)
EDIT: Sorry, I've posted this in the wrong forum, I think...
