Anyone else been in this situation?

[Eppiox]

For vanilla AI war:Fleet command.
I have been having a good read though this forum looking for tips and strategies and I think I have annoyed the AI to much
40 planet map, down to just 7 AI Planets left but i can't take any of them now.

I figured out if you wipe a planet out and leave it empty the AI will never use the empty planet as a route to send an attack to you, so this way even though i have 26 of the planets and only one is ever directly connected to an AI planet the other 7 are empty and the rest are controlled by the AI. This way it's the only planet that gets waves sent against it... and i can beef it's defenses up big time.

I have an army of about 3000~3400 yet the AI on all planets has about 2500 and 20 to 30 carriers :S  If i even send one small tiny lvl 1 fighter to try and draw in a few 100 enemy ships i get about 2000 enemy ships and 10 carriers into my planet.

This is the weakest of the 7 left and if i can't kill this one I've lost all hope
Playing the in the way of leaving enemy command stations and warp gates alive to keep the AI low really annoys me, if anything that should make the AI angrier the longer they are left isolated.
Here are some screen shots of the enemy planet and the defenses of my planet.
Survived an earlier attack of 4000 enemy ships. The CPA in the images was only around 1000 ships from the adjacent planet.
When the carriers come i need to EMP them hehe.

Any suggestions?

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/8027/icantgetpast.jpg   weakest of the planets

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/4786/myarmy.jpg   My army (almost full)

[Echo35]

Well, you're playing a map with only 40 planets, are trying to take them all, and the AIP is nearly 2,000. Yep, those forces look about right to me.

[Wingsofdomain]

Yeah the AIP is very high so it's not stragne at all that the AI has so many ships. Howver you don't have to destroy a complete planet to avoid getting waves. You just have to destroy their WARP GATE. That will only increase the AIP with 5+. The command station will increase AIP with 15+. So if you start doing gate raids instead of destroy whole planets around you, you will save 15 AIP per planet. But you don't have to gate raid either, you can just build a lot of defences xD.

Apperntly you don't know how the AIP work? However if you don't, the basic things about is that you can't just take over every planet, you'll have to choose what planets you think is worth taking. And yeah the more AIP is the greater it's forces will be. Forgot to tell you that.

[Tridus]

Yeah, I had that happen to me when I first started too.

As the other posters mentioned, to stop waves from coming in you just need to destroy the warp gate, and things that can act like a gate (IIRC the AI Eye). Destroying the AI's command center at the planet will raise the AI progress (the AI strength, effectively) dramatically. Only do that on a planet you want to colonize yourself.

You've got the right idea, but you want to do it while keeping the AI progress as low as possible.

[ShadowOTE]

Of course, the goal may be to wipe out the AI completely, in which case at this point all i can say is to start drawing them into the killzone faster than they replinish, and focus on killing guardposts when you raid. Also, EMP missles might help here.

[Eppiox]

I figured that if i left planets and chose to take over specific strategic ones then the ones i left would eventually become as strong as the ones i am fighting now so either way i would need to have a fleet strong enough to take them down.
My AI's level was around 900 when i got to this part of the game, it was all the missiles i used trying to take the planet that doubled it

Seems like the game is missing something for this far in, maybe i should try the expansions to see if there are stronger units... But i guess the AI would scale as well.

As much as i really like this game i think the part about keeping the AI level down by only taking specific planets or only warp gates etc is what puts me off the most, i don't want to believe an AI that can make advanced star ships can't figure out what we are doing :/

[Suzera]

My AI's level was around 900 when i got to this part of the game, it was all the missiles i used trying to take the planet that doubled it

I found your problem. Don't use missiles.

It is one of the worst things you can do in almost all cases that isn't stuff like deleting your fleet every time it is built.

[Echo35]

As much as i really like this game i think the part about keeping the AI level down by only taking specific planets or only warp gates etc

That's kind of the entire point of the game. Using as little direct force as necessary and balancing your opportunity costs.

[ShadowOTE]

Yeah, missiles are really a last ditch weapon. If you've tried cracking the system and can't grind it down, THEN you consider them, cause if they don't result in you getting whatever you used them for they're a waste of time that makes the next time even harder.

[Wingsofdomain]

But that was also waht he said. He didn't use the missils until he got stuck. As he says in the original post, he had a save file before trying to attack those planets, and I guess that save file was BEFORE he used the missils and the picture is after one of his tries, when he used missils. Woah long sentence. Anyhow thats my guessing.

To solve the problem isn't there a way to lure the enemy into your own planet? Cause then you can build a massive turrent defence there xD.

(Btw if you are a she then I apologise, a lot)

[Suzera]

I read it as Eppiox was using missiles, then got stuck and tried using even more missiles.

I haven't been in a situation yet where I needed or even looked at missiles as a possibility even on difficulty 8.

[Echo35]

I haven't been in a situation yet where I needed or even looked at missiles as a possibility even on difficulty 8.

There was a situation where I was losing quite badly and said "Frak this" and built the super weapon nuke and obliterated the galaxy. But as far as actually having to USE missiles, I don't think I've ever had to since the AI stopped using turrets.

[Eppiox]

Learned my lesson about the AI and brute force, you can beat it until... you get down to about 15~20% of the planets left in it's control, then you have no chance.
For the record-
Did not use missiles until i was stuck- but the AI level was 900 anyway from destroying 33 systems

Started again on the same system and I'm going pretty good... gone straight for the first AI home world with less then 100 AI It's quite a bugger to try and take even on 7 difficulty and <100 AI :O
Those 500 hp neinzul things?! so annoying!

Also mucking around... 10 planet world with 2 lvl 10 AI, blitz mode on, waves off(seriously first wave was over 10k units haha) start off with 8 planets complex units. Eventually you can beat a level 10 AI !

[Echo35]

Also mucking around... 10 planet world with 2 lvl 10 AI, blitz mode on, waves off(seriously first wave was over 10k units haha) start off with 8 planets complex units. Eventually you can beat a level 10 AI !

Anything less than 40-50 planets tends to be much harder anyway.