End game strategy

[Ramsar]

I was wondering whether is advised to neuter the IV core planets before destroying the AI home command station? Or will this reinforce the AI home planet too much?

[chemical_art]

Varies on how fast you neuter the core planet:

If you somehow are able to overpower the MK IV world in 10 minutes and neuter it, you can then back out the whole fleet two jumps away. That would leave the MK V world 10 minutes to reinforce, which seems acceptable if your goal was to neuter one core world so you can have a place to organize up before hitting the MK V world.

However, if the operation takes two hours...I would not be so supportive of it.

[BobTheJanitor]

I usually hop over the core worlds with as many ships as I can cram into transports and try to take the homeworld before the AI has any chance to reinforce with any of those big bad MkV ships.

[Red Spot]

In normal games I tend to take a coreplanet and set up shop there.
What it in effect means is that I can get a small, specialised, fleet in, nuke a target. Than get whatever is left, heavilly damaged, back on a planet of my own, repair and reinforce and relaunch the attack to take down the next target.

Doesnt matter much if you keep the planet on allert if you keep pummeling it. I however would not take a coreplanet if I am not certain I can keep the pressure up for say the next ½ to full hour.

[zoutzakje]

I just managed to destroy a 7.3 AI homeworld. Neutering the core planet and the planet before that (putting the core planets on alert for too long can be devastating as well), putting all my forces on the core planet. Then putting my regenerator golem with a small part of my fleet on the homeworld (homeworld had an AI eye). put the golem on a safe spot so it's out of the MK III fort's range. Then blowing up the fort and surrounding guard posts. by that time my golems health has dropped to 20%, so retreating, have my mk III engineers repair the golem a bit, and moving back again. I could only do this twice before I ran out of resources, but thankfully that was enough to kill all the guard posts. Ai eye exploded and moved in rest of fleet to destroy another MK III fort and blow up the command station.
This took me about an hour. Thank god my botnet golem has made enough zombies to patrol my systems and fend off any incoming wave.
Ai progress is now 427 and I still gotta take the second homeworld... another AI eye ftl :/