Endgame advice

[RCIX]

I save scum when I am learning a new tactic. After my first mistake, I don't reload if I repeat it.

To answer the question: The easiest endgame is the fastest endgame. I tend to stop expanding after 9 planets, and then start hunting for an advanced factory. Once I have that, I locate the core worlds and plan a route to them that meets the least resistance. I always try to kill the core planet before it can reinforce, because it receives truly murderous reinforcements.

Attrition is the warrior's greatest enemy. Siege is the commander's folly.

Sure, but i like the fun of the "meet and greet" with a lot of different planets, and besides it's almost impossible to get away with that few planets on anything close to a vines-type map.

[deMangler]

Very interesting comparison between AI War, Dwarf Fortress and Rogue. Made me think.
Dwarf Fortress has emergent behaviour.
Rogue is very much a game of 'How am I just about to die suddenly and then realize what I could have done to avoid it?'
The fun from these games comes more from the replayability that comes from these characteristics, that is really spoiled by savescumming.
The reason I am so delighted by AI War is a lot to do with it sharing these qualities.
In fact, I keep discovering more reasons why I like it.

dM

<edit>Oh, and the RPG side of things..... Very much a game where I wear my Generals hat and talk to myself. My partner is a very patient woman. <edit>

[x4000]

<edit>Oh, and the RPG side of things..... Very much a game where I wear my Generals hat and talk to myself. My partner is a very patient woman. <edit>

 

[Lancefighter]

<edit>Oh, and the RPG side of things..... Very much a game where I wear my Generals hat and talk to myself. My partner is a very patient woman. <edit>

Why does this sound all too familiar...   

[Tim James]

Shh... don't tell anyone, but I started a new game. Obsession is a terrible thing.

This time I chose AIs with ligher defenses, the Tank and I think the Sledgehammer. The one with superfortresses. The game has been a real pleasure not having to deal with 2000 ships and 50 turrets at each point, although I still get killed by the turret stacking glitch sometimes. I also noticed that a Mark III planet I stripped down to just the command station and warp gate a couple hours ago now has 500 ships on it. I was expecting better from destroying all the guard posts, so that was disappointing.

Inspired by some AARs on the forum, I decided to only take a minimum of planets (hopping to the valuable ones with raids) and used upgraded command stations to make up the difference. Even with AI Progress +1 per 5 minutes, I was sitting at 150 with all the planets captured that I wanted. I kept up with knowledge raiding this time, although I had fewer planets in supply to take advantage of it. Wasn't sure what to do with my knowledge, so I tried unlocking all the raid starships. I'm going to use them to destroy data centers and then lazily clear a path toward the two AIs and grab some more knowledge. The homeworlds are fairly close so I can use a centralized planet for space docks. The Mark IV guard planets even have a Mark II planet buffer around them so I can get to two hops away.

This time around it almost seems like cheating compared to those last two games, but it's been a lot more enjoyable.

[Lancefighter]

I would mention that the AI resupplies to cloaked wormhole guard posts - EMP them and they appear... then blow them up with starships or transports full of your support fleet

[HitmanN]

'ey Tim James, if you still got that Entrenched Homeworlder / Turtle save around, you could try what I did, provided that you can reach the AI homeworld with a sizable enough fleet. This does involve tricking the AI, and I never really felt like it was a real victory, but I did manage to down the command station. I just wanted to finally win a game, lol. I had already wiped out the other AI's (Turtle) homeworld a few hours earlier though, which was surprisingly easy at the time, so all I had was one single target left. This was in version 3.0.0.0, so I'm not sure if something's changed since then. Small map, I think 25 planets. This was my second game, which I had also given up on earlier, but decided to try it again later on, after learning a few new things.

I'm attaching some screenshots of the assault on the Homeworld.

Before attacking the AI homeworld, I had basically nuked the nearby planets, mostly overly reinforced III's and IV's. I didn't care about AI progress at that point anymore. I had the fleet I wanted to use for the final attack, so it didn't matter if I lost a few planets from the resulting AI attacks or whatever.

Screen 1
Here's what I'm up against. The AI homeworld that I had accidentally put on alert from about the mid-game, nearly 5000 ships (mostly IV and Core), 13 spires, 10 zeniths, Ion Cannon and Fortress and other usual goodies. Now, what do I have. A good 2000+ ships, which is pretty neat amount, I think. Too bad only fighters and bombers are mkIII's and IV's. Others are I and II. Yeah, my upgrading priorities were a big fail, lol. Some starships (Flagships, light starships). Then I have my heroes, 2 Armored Warheads.

I first sent in the Armored Warheads as decoys, to draw the AI's from the command station and the nearby guard posts to chase them (works up to a certain distance before the AI's return to their posts). Initially my idea was to collect a bunch of those AI ships together and blast both nukes, which is enough to wipe out 800-1000 ships if I was lucky. However, I figured that the longer the AI's are chasing the nukes, the more I have time to move my fleet on the command station. So I left the warheads there, with about 2000 AI ships focusing on them, and only a few left at the station. Oh, and all the AI Spires in FRD mode went after those warheads, so all I had left to deal with were the Zeniths and some turrets. The Fortress was also out of Supply and thus not a threat, hehe.

Screen 2
I move on the command station and focus all my ships to fire on the force field at first, then get ready to fire on the command station. I was preparing for those 2000 AI's chasing the nukes on the other side of the command station to go after my fleet once I hit the command station, but delightfully enough, they decided that the stationary nukes were a bigger threat to them than 2000 of my ships firing on the command station, and kept shooting on those nukes. xD Needless to say, I was given a lot of free time to work my magic on the command station. The guards that were not chasing nukes were quite far away and didn't have enough time to reach me in time.

Screen 3
Boom! Proof that it worked. Of course, I didn't stick around to see those leftover Core and IV ships to pummel my fleet and considered it a victory. xP I'll probably see if I can hold them off sometime, to seal a definitive victory, but I'm quite sure that's just too much against my already weakened defenses.

Bottom line is, try using Armored Warheads as decoys. xP Worked on AI difficulty 6 at least. Heh. A bit lame, but at least "You Win".

[Tim James]

Cool, glad it worked for you.

As a final followup, I was able to take out The Tank and Sledgehammer without much difficulty. I had tons of income and reserves due to the upgraded command stations, and very low AI Progress from data center raids. I was able to leisurely move my force from one homeworld, repair it up and replace ship cap, then move on the next one. The super fortress and core command station went down pretty quickly to my 2000+ ships due to all the attack boosts I had from starships.

I took down both homeworlds in one try without breaking a sweat, skipping over each Mark IV guard planet. I'm satisfied now!

Is there a reason the game result says "Incomplete" on the high score screen?

[Lancefighter]

its bugged, unfortunately

[HitmanN]

Yeah, mine's still "incomplete" as well.

[Doddler]

Sorry if I'm butting in here.  I'm kind of in the same boat as the OP, but having issues attacking homeworlds.  But lots of the planet busting strategies don't work very well when the AI is stacking Warhead Buster/Mass Driver/Ion II on both homeworld and all adjacent systems.  Is there any specific way to counter an entrenched homeworld when your starships and warheads can't be used?

[x4000]

Sorry if I'm butting in here.  I'm kind of in the same boat as the OP, but having issues attacking homeworlds.  But lots of the planet busting strategies don't work very well when the AI is stacking Warhead Buster/Mass Driver/Ion II on both homeworld and all adjacent systems.  Is there any specific way to counter an entrenched homeworld when your starships and warheads can't be used?

Best thing is to first raid those Mass Drivers, etc, and kill them -- then bring in the bigger guns, so to speak.  If you take it as a two-step process in that way, then you can still succeed quite well.

[Kordy]

Golems make good decoys as well, but your best bet is either the armed warhead with 2.000.000.000 hp or raid starships to let ai chase your decoy around; they have 'AI will leave posts to pursue' trait. Then simply unleash hell. Mines can be problematic, however. I suggest using a decoy for the decoy - mk1 fighters; they have the highest health while being really cheap. They'll soak up the mines, then your raid starships can roam free. Sniper turrets have low damage anyhow, it's the dreadnoughts of the AI that can dent your raid starship from reasonable lengths, And if you stagger the entry of your fighters a bit, you can avoid the turret alpha strike mostly.

Or, you can do it the wrong way, nuking ai homeworlds, using armored and lightning warheads liberally to clean out the guard posts etc and THEN take your 2000 size fleet into the system. And remember, if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.




I had over 8000 AIP after I won (5 nukes, 1 on the way to ai core planets, 2 on ai core planets and 2 on ai homeworld). Note that I used easy AI levels and resource bonuses to check out the cloaking space planes. They are awesome if you can micro-manage the recloak when you're defending against or attacking ships, but they die fast to the lightning towers, and they have no shields so kiting with them is harder.

Don't ever expect to kill the ai home command stations with a single warhead, I made that mistake . The armored ones do 1% damage to them. I've used around 100 on both planets total, just for the heck of it after seeing the spectacular results of 1% damage.

So, tl;dr: Alerting a core planet, or nuking it is a bad move. But even then the game might be salvageable, so it's better to try it... and savescum if it doesn't work

Altough, some AI types really punish you on your mistakes and make it pretty much impossible.

(From a 4-person game I missed because I didn't have Zenith Remnant at that point )