Did I just get really unlucky?

[carlosjuero]

So after chatting to some folks in IRC today I decided to 'up' my game and created a new game to play.

Settings: Level 6 Random Easy AI, 80 Planets, Simple Map

I picked a planet that had Microfighters as the 'perk' (I like the idea of a normal unit that can de-cloak enemies) and only 2 wormhole exits (easier to secure... I thought). I build up a little bit and send out my first wave of scouts like normal.. thats when things start getting hairy.

To my right one jump away is a Mark IV world with 9 Mark V/Core ships and a ton of Mark IV and below ships.

To my left one jump away is a 'trash' world with over 100 AI ships, a SF station, a Starship construction yard, and every wormhole well covered by tractor beam turrets, sniper turrets, MLRS, missile, and basic turrets.

That system had 3 connections, I sent probes out in 2 of them - in one the probes were destroyed before providing me with insight to the world, and the other was another Mark IV world (with more Mark V core ships).

I am at about the 3 hour mark in the game and JUST managed to take out the 'trash' world after tossing over 600 ships (over time) at it. In the end I only managed to wipe out resistance by constantly building turrets around hard spots (they serve as pretty good distractions too) so the world became a 'Turret Point' for me. about 15 minutes after completely taking over the colony I get a wave of 124 cross planet attackers hit me (the attacks never really ceased to be honest). Luckily I had enough turrets up to make up for my lack of a defensive force.

I tried sending scouts out again to see if I could push on and find a mineral rich world (I am dying for resources really).. what do I find? out of the 3 jumps in the system I just took - 1 is a Mark IV world (see above [left side]) 2 are mark III worlds... with Ion Cannons.

So I am literally stuck between a rock and a hard place - I have extremely low raw material income, I am just about out of knowledge (I had to spend points on defenses to keep my butt from being handed to me early on). My homeworld is well fortified, but a concerted attack could probably get through my layered defenses (Wormhole traps, double FF on home base).

Heres what my star map looks like right now:


The P0 is my homeworld, the P1 is the planet that took me forever to crack at a great loss of ships and supply. The 2 III worlds shown have Ion Cannons, and the 2 IV worlds are well defended with 9+ Mark V/Core ships each.

Am I just really unlucky? I don't have resources for a huge fleet right now, my energy situation can be partially alleviated.. but at a cost to raw materials. If I send a research raid out.. it will either be decimated by the Ion Cannon or it will be beaten down before too long by a huge wave of baddies at a large ship cost to myself.

While its frustrating, it certainly has me thinking like an embattled human admiral trying to find a way to outwit a much more resource intense AI enemy. I love it! I also am frustrated beyond belief with my current situation :/

[x4000]

This sort of thing happens from time to time.  The best thing, usually, is to just hop past those higher-level planets and take another planet on the other side of them, at least at first.  A few general thoughts for this sort of situation:

- Transports make hopping the planets pretty easy if you have the knowledge for them, but if you've already spent all your knowledge then that is more troublesome.

- Right at the start of the game, before you unlock too many techs, it is a good idea to at least scout your general surroundings.  That way if you run into a situation like this, you can unlock accordingly (Raid Starships, or Transports, or even MkII Command Stations to increase your income, etc).

- If worse comes to worst, you can always build a warhead silo and send a nuke over to one of the MkIV planets.  That will make the planet useless to you as well as the AI, but it will at least punch a hole to let you get through.

- You could also potentially experiment with EMPs or lightning missiles to get past one of these planets.  EMPs would give you time to slip past if you don't have the K to unlock transports, while lightning missiles would help you take out one of those planets on the cheap, but at AI Progress cost.

- You can also use a forcefield, which is mobile, as a poor man's transport if you want.  Just group-move it along a planet along with your other stuff.

- Before you decide what to do, you really need more intel.  You need to know what is on the other side of these planets, so you can choose which one to take or bypass.  Building all of your MkI scouts at once and sending them in a big group along the galaxy map paths should get the job done.

- If you're feeling put-upon at this early stage of this map, look on the bright side: the AI gets a fixed number of "upgraded" planets per map, and if so many of them are right next to your home planets, that means there are fewer elsewhere out in the galaxy.  That can work to your advantage later, making the middle and late game stages potentially easier despite the tougher beginning.

Hope that helps!

EDIT: Also, with regard to the ion cannons problem, you can build Mark II science labs, which are immune to being insta-killed, and thus also immune to the ion cannons.

Also also, bear in mind that if the AI only has 100 units on a planet, that is extremely low.  In 3-4 hours, it will have around 4,000 ships on each of those planets.  So, you can hop over them and ignore them for now, but eventually you will probably want to make a permanent path through there.  You can always resort to nukes later if you must, but given the AI Progress cost of those they are really intended to be a last resort -- but when they are needed, they sure are a lifesaver.

[carlosjuero]

Thanks for the tips X - I wanted to stay away from Nukes but may have to resort to at least 1 to open up a getaway path. I didn't think to check the tooltips of my scouts too thoroughly when I sent them out before opening tech, I saw some bad guys with mass emplacements on either side of me and went defensive tech wise, I will have to get away from that habit in future games (Though I am a Turtle personality, I like my 'base' to be well fortified if possible).

Right now I use forcefields to protect my ingress point on incursions (and to protect my science raid lab), problem is the AI loves bombers (at least the 2 I am against now) and Laser Gatlings - I think I hit a bad combo of AI types with the random option.

I will keep on this game until the AI kills me or I kill the AI, hopefully I can get a balance of ships up soon to make a good attack fleet. I figure I need to take out both Mark IV worlds and at least the closest Mark III world as soon as possible to get some breathing room, they are pretty poor resource wise so I may just establish beachheads there (maybe nuke one of em, but the 50 point gain in progress may be a bit much until I build up more). I want to try and capture one of the Ion Cannon worlds to provide a good forward post, with an Ion cannon as part of defense I can use it as a jumping off point for raids without maintaining a large defensive fleet (or spending tons of resources on too many turrets).

Thanks again, should probably get my butt back in game and see how it goes

[x4000]

I would not worry about capturing all of them -- that's a good way to unneccessarily raise the ai progress. Rather, I would focus on gate raids on the ones next to your home planet, and punching through one to make a permanent path out into the galaxy. You'll always have hostile planets near you, so it's a matter of fortifying against them without going overboard and making offense impossible.

I am by nature a turtle in rts, too, so I sympathize with your struggle on wanting to have good defenses. So do what you will, just making sure that you don't use up all your resources on defense alone. Ai war was designed to both curb raiding and turtling and make players play more of a balanced approach as in chess or most tbs games. But, there is plenty of room to bend it to your own will.

[Echo35]

I either had that seed or one very similar to it once. I just gave up and started a new game

[x4000]

Sometimes those can be the most fun seeds.  But not right when you are learning, depending.  And, you have to be looking for that specific sort of game at the time.

[carlosjuero]

Well - finally got back to playing this game and it hasn't gotten good :/, in fact I found another Ion Cannon world (a Mark IV world) and all warpgates are being covered with Sensors now. Enemy waves are including Mark IV ships (And I don't even have any Mark III yet). Looking like I will have to abandon this game - all of my resources are going to staying alive at the moment.,

Heres the galaxy as of now:


I also found out (via the High Scores menu) who I am fighting against: The Sledgehammer, and The Tank.

I think I will have to start again with a different seed - I see no winning in my current game.

[I-KP]

That's the harshest starting position I've seen yet for a map of that size.  Bravo.

[carlosjuero]

That's the harshest starting position I've seen yet for a map of that size.  Bravo.

Yeah - its kinda crazy the way this one turned out :/

I have a side question for X - according to the Wiki:
"So unless your AI's tech level is already mark IV, you'd never see mark IV ships coming against your planets in a cross-planet attack. "

This should mean that unless the AI Progress has IV in the brackets I shouldn't see any Mark IV ships coming against me in CP attacks right? Well.. I may have bugged myself cause the last attack I survived through (part of a 148 ship wave) contained no less than 30 Mark IV Missile Cruisers. With an AI Progress in the 30's, and a 'I' next to the progress.

[Lancefighter]

cross planet attacks, i believe, just depend on what ships are there

However, special forces outposts (they look like weird asteroid things..) have planet mark (so mk4) units at them, so they might be a good idea to raid.

What I would do, in your situation, is run knowledge raids on as many of those planets as possible before making a huge move. Dropping a forcefield or two onto a planet, and then group move a BUNCH of research ships and engineers under the shield on a hostile planet. Bring fighters too..

Basically, getting the reasearch means mk2 or mk3 units of your own. this is useful, especially if you have the resources to pump out raid or fleet starships. Those can quite literally do a ton  of damage to almost any planet, if you take care of them

Anyway, from there it might indeed be best to merely restart.
I'm not how sure tachyon microfighters really are though, I havent tried them (nor seen them used against me well)

As a new player, I was partial to laser gatlings. Beasts, i tell you. Not quite as fast or strong as raiders, but a hell of a lot cheaper.

[HellishFiend]

As a new player, I was partial to laser gatlings. Beasts, i tell you. Not quite as fast or strong as raiders, but a hell of a lot cheaper.

Laser gats have been nerfed since then, I believe.

[Lancefighter]

. . . my laser gatlings

ohwell. I've migrated to starships now anyway.

still cant really decide what i like as my special unit, raiders are nice, but expensive, space planes are fairly useful in raids... havent even tried teleporting stuff >.>

[x4000]

"Cross planet attacks" refer to a really specific event: namely, when it is counting down the timer and saying that some 1000 or more ships are going to be released all at once.

There are other things such as the special forces units (which won't be higher mark levels either, those get populated at the level of the current AI mark level regardless of the level of the planet), which come without warning.  Also, when you're battling enemy ships on their planets, sometimes they will "get free" and come attack you in kind.  There was actually a bug in 2.0 and the older 2.001 prereleases that was causing this to happen much too often; most likely that is what you were running up against.  The latest 2.001 prereleases don't have that as much anymore.

[Harry]

Wow, I'd say you did get unlucky, Carlos!  It looks like a fun challenge for someone more experienced than me, but if it were me, I'd restart too.