AI Raid Spamming

[Doddler]

I'm having a bit of an issue in my current game.  I'm playing difficulty 7, expansion enabled, no minor factions and default settings against what turns out to be two zenith descendant AI's.  Things are turning out pretty good, though a bit slow, just past the 10 hour mark.  I made a bunch of raids and destroyed a group of AI worlds in a row that I wanted to capture.

When attacking, when I entered the AI system, immediately a wave indicator popped up saying that about 200 tech 3 zenith chameleons incoming in 1 minute to ???.  After 1 minute, chameleons didn't show up, but a huge blob of random zenith ships.  I don't understand why the raids were tech 3, as my AI progress was 275, only enough for tech 2 raids.  But I figured this is normal, the AI is defending itself.

Anyways, I left the system after destroying the command center.  But the AI kept sending waves.  Every 3 minutes, it would send 200 tech 3 ships to a system I didn't own.  It was ok at first, but I can't handle these constant waves and eventually started losing planets.  I eventually gave up, as there's no real way I could make a comeback with the wave spamming.

Is there any reason why the AI would spam waves to a system I don't control with high level waves?  There was a broken golem in the system, but I don't own the system.  I just need to know what I did wrong so I don't get caught in this trap next time.

[Ruges]

I am exsperiencing somthing simular to what you are. I am playing on the snake map with L10 AI and I think its medium or medium high AI. (the reason for the higher mark waves is even thow your AI progress is low the AI you probly have gives it units 1 over the current mrk level).

Now I went on a mad rush. Destroying about 10 command stations and warp gates all in a line. I was hoping this would force the AI to loose supply to those planets and do a bum rush on my first world (which I have super heavy defenses on, would be able to defeat a wave of 20+k units). While they did send a few thousand down. it was never the whole batch. And new raids of a couple thousand ships where coming every few mins. However becouse of this no mans land in between us (noone controls the planet). Its like the AI does not know where I am. Now it still has some troops located on these worlds, anywhere from 100 to 5k. with a total of 27K threat. But they are not really doing anything with them. Currently I am rebuilding my forces, and with the command stations down, I should be able to move my blob slowily up this nomans land clearing all.

I just wish the Ion cannons would go offline when the AI looses its command post and surrounding command posts thus loosing supply to that planet.

But for advice I sugest you do like I have done, setup some turrets on your planet. Turrets love killing things.

[Velox]

     Sounds like there's a Raid Engine lurking back there somewhere.  It doesn't care who controls the planet - if it's not the AI, then you're in for a pounding.

[Doddler]

     Sounds like there's a Raid Engine lurking back there somewhere.  It doesn't care who controls the planet - if it's not the AI, then you're in for a pounding.

After taking another look, you are right, there was a Raid Engine.  I wasn't aware of what these things did so I never kept an eye open for them... now I know!  I don't think I can recover at this point, but it's a good thing to keep in mind for future games.

I'm actually a little disapointed that it was the result of the raid engine.  While the AI does some interesting things with ships it decides to fling at me, the AI hasn't done anything that has been really... interesting.  Everything he does is more or less governed by what structures he has layed out on the field and a fixed set of 'you do this he does this' parameters.  I was hoping that what was going on was more spontaneous than structure x causes AI to do y. 

[Spikey00]

Raid engines are fun.

[x4000]

I'm actually a little disapointed that it was the result of the raid engine.  While the AI does some interesting things with ships it decides to fling at me, the AI hasn't done anything that has been really... interesting.  Everything he does is more or less governed by what structures he has layed out on the field and a fixed set of 'you do this he does this' parameters.  I was hoping that what was going on was more spontaneous than structure x causes AI to do y. 

Well, depends on the game, and the map.  If you are leaving very little options for the AI, then there are fewer interesting things for him to do.  If you are at 275 AI Progress after 10 hours, then most likely you have a very low surface-area at which to be attacked, which makes for a bit less emergence in some cases.  But, even so, you're likely to see flashes of unexpected behavior if you're watching for it, throughout there.  It just varies by your playstyle, what you're actually noticing, what opportunities the map provides for the AI, etc.  As for the various special buildings, think of those as more the "landscape" of the current scenario, rather than truly part of the AI.  You stumbled into part of the landscape that has a Raid Engine, and so certain predictable results come off of it.  That's part of the exploratory nature of the game, versus the combative nature of what the AI does when it has some freely-controllable units it can play with.

[Doddler]

Thanks for the reply x4000.  I guess I haven't seen as much of the game as I think sometimes!  I'm a slow player, but I'm enjoying myself.

[x4000]

Glad to hear it!