Breaking a barricade

[Mánagarmr]

Hi there!

I've been playing AI War on and off for a couple of months now, and I always seem to end up in the same situation, even in really easy games (15 planets, AI at 5 or 6). I find their home planets and I'm completely unable to break through with any significant force to destroy their home base. They have tons of Mark IV and Core ships in additon to multiple Core turrets at the wormhole and no matter if I send all my 1600 ships through, I simply cannot make a large enough dent.

Tried nuking (bad idea), tried sending in starships first to "tank" (they died instantly). My AI progress is only around 70 and still I can't break through.

I can also not rebuild my army fast enough to capitalize on the enemy weakness right after my attack. So please, help, how do I break through their Core camps and expect to live to tell about it?


Btw, first post!

[XRsyst]

Try playing on a larger galaxy, small galaxies offer less knowledge, and fewer oppertunities to capture adv research ships making them much more difficult than their larger bretheren.

[corfe83]

FWIW, the "standard" / recommended game is typically 80 planets.

[Saan]

60 planets is a good stepping stone to 80. 

[Mánagarmr]

  And here I thought smaller was easier. I feel dumb now 

[Lancefighter]

The problem with smaller maps is that while there is less to keep track of, there is also MUCH less knowledge. A 15 planet map has 10k(starting)+30k from planets..

I started with a 40 planet map - 10k+80k knowledge.. More than twice as much.. Anyway, it also gives you more routes around the map if you need to go through something that is hard to get through.

Basically it lets you concentrate your forces, and lets the Ai concentrate their forces too.

[Echo35]

60 planets is a good stepping stone to 80. 

I usually play between 60 and 80 planets. I know 80 is the default recommended, but 60 still feels normal without getting too clustered.

[Mánagarmr]

I'm gonna try a new game with at least 60 planets and we'll see how it works out. I think I'm too wound up in my old zerg mentality. (Played Zerg in StarCraft and was very proficient and early raiding and botspam in Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance) Zerging doesn't seem to work well against the AI.

So much to learn!

[AdamK]

One tactic I've been using is transport raiding.

I push bombers to 4 (with advanced station) then build absolutely all of them.

Then I pack all the bombers, plus all my fighters and frigates (and tanks if you have them, or anything else heavy) into a transport fleet (maybe 10 or 15 transports for the whole thing).

Since the transports can blockade-run past the AI's defenses, you can run your entire packed fleet into the AI home system and then unload all 1,000 ships or so directly onto the final station, ignoring everything else in the system. Then you pound like hell on any shields protecting it, and on the station and hope you can do all 100,000,000 or so damage before the fleet is wiped out. Keep the transports there as well, they can act as decoy targets that will soak up a ton of damage.

It also helps enormously to not take the system next door.

You let the transport raid skip over the planet before it (which will be heavily reinforced) and land the transported fleet before the AI has reinforced the home system too heavily if at all.

Note that losses could well be vicious doing this even if you succeed, and for the first AI you might need to survive the backlash almost entirely with towers alone. So pack the hell out of the raid entry gate with defenses, and reserve your low-health mobile ships and any starships for only dealing with the subset of attackers that can evade tractors.