Homeworld Question - Core Plasma Eye (New Player)

[Mephology]

First game of AI:war that I have taken to completion and have been really enjoying it.  I had two other starts that went spectacularly poorly.  First time through, on an 80 planet map 6/7, I took about 20 worlds to create a nice secure place to start attacking from.  The constant carrier waves once the AI progress got about 450+ just destroyed me.  The next game I accidentally put a core world on alert. So this game, I decided to read up a little on what others were doing and start much easier 50 planets, and 4/5 so I could get the hang of things.

I ran into a situation on the home world that I was wondering how people deal with. An AI Fortress was shielding two guard posts. Additionally, there was a core plasma eye in system severely limiting the number of ships I can have.  I killed one of the guard posts with the Starship bomber 30 or so  regular bombers that I had by attacking at an angle that ranged the heavy beam guard post.  The problem I had was with the heavy beam guard post. The only way that I found to deal with it was send in my two starship bombers, attack once and then pull them out to repair.  Usually they would get a second attack in while coming out and would get out with about 30% life while doing about 10% damage.  It was successful, but really slow.  The Zenith bombardment ships and raid starships provided effective cover from incoming ships while doing these attacks. I think it took about 10minutes. Any suggestions for dealing with that better or faster? (Probably should have saved for bomber starships II?) As a side note, at one point when doing the hit run on the guard post, the AI decided to empty out all the ships it had been holding back on the planet.  My bombardment ships made quick work of them unfortunately and the core eye killed 90% of my meager fleet before finally shutting off which was fun.

Finally, if anyone has any suggestions about my overall strategy in the game or things that I am doing horribly wrong, it would be fantastic to hear about it (e.g. tech choices or overall strategy)  I am really enjoying the tremendous amount of depth in the game, but overall a really challenging learning curve which is nice.  A few notes about the game:

• Zoroorrae is the main choke point
• Amahas had a hacking terminal and two knowledge on it which is why I grabbed those two next to each-other.
• Uobark could have been planned better, Cicau or Shoulraid were better choices
• Raeorigin I ended up grabbing to be within 4 for the home world and to get some more science to be able to grab raid III starships (which were totally unnecessary)
• I think I had the galaxy scouted with Scout II's and scouts on all the core worlds except one AI homeworld, I could not get a scout alive on it.  Since I already had the advanced factory, I just teched Scout III/IV's to be done with it. I got tired of trying. Any suggestions for getting scouts onto a particularly nasty home world? I tried with one scout starship and 14 scout II's. Would more scout startships have been better?
• I was really hurting throughout the game for upgrades.  Not sure the econ III upgrades were worth it, same for the fort unlock. I really could have used better bombers earlier and bomber starship II.  I had to take out a superfortress and fortress at one point with only bomber I's, bomber starships and a handful of mercenary bombers which took forever.

Now that I have the basics, probably time to actually try a challenging opponent.

[keith.lamothe]

Welcome to the forums I'm sure someone will be along with some sane advice, but a few things come to mind:

1) You can keep whittling away at the guard posts with fleets that don't trigger the eye.  Just prioritize the most powerful individual units.  Once all the posts are down, the eye goes away (though at that point it's basically over for that HW anyway).

2) You can target the eye directly and probably take it down eventually.

3) If the AI has reclamator stuff and you have some suitably high-cap bonus ships you could try to intentionally get it to reclaim those ships to bump up the "eye cap" and get more room for what you need to do.

4) In theory you could take a bordering core world to get supply, and build forts on the AI HW.  A full cap of those wouldn't trigger the eye but could probably kill everything non-bomber on the planet with relative ease, if you could get them built.  But if it doesn't work the reinforcements could get nasty.  One of those relatively-low-difficulty only cheeses.

[Kahuna]

I'm sure someone will be along with some sane advice

Oh! You have much to learn young grasshopper.
Learning the way of AI War is like climbing a mountain.. you have to take it step.. by step..

2) You can target the eye directly and probably take it down eventually.

Yep. All it takes is Bombers, Heavy Bomber Starships, Plasmasiege Starships and the patience of a cow.

[Kahuna]

Finally, if anyone has any suggestions about my overall strategy in the game or things that I am doing horribly wrong, it would be fantastic to hear about it (e.g. tech choices or overall strategy)

NEW VERSION:
Kahuna's Guide To AI War - Find Your Inner Super Cat!
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13369.msg151816.html#msg151816



Hi and welcome to the forums.

I play almost exclusively 10/10 difficulty games and I've been playing AI War quite a lot so I think I might have something useful to say.

Some overall strategies and tech unlocks:
I myself tend to play very defensively. Usually I fortify my planets heavily and focus on doing surgical strikes with Raid Starships, small fleet of mostly MarkI, some MarkII fleet ships and Starships and/or Golems if I have them enabled.

At the beginning of the game I always unlock either MarkIIs or IIIs of both resource harvesters. Then I usually unlock higher Marks of turrets. Sometimes MarkII Bombers or Missile Frigates. Now I've started unlocking MarkII Leech Starships which are surprisingly powerful. Especially for defensive purposes. You can park them behind your turrets, let turrets kill the AI ships and watch as the Leech Starships reclaim the AI ships. You will notice their true power if you play against the Starfleet Commander AI. After I have captured 1 additional planet (Home planet + 1 planet = 16000 Knowledge) I often unlock MarkII Raid Starships and MarkII Scouts so I can start finding and destroying Data Centers. I and probably everyone else always unlocks MarkI Gravitational Turrets right at the beginning. They greatly slow down the AI ships and give your turrets more time to shoot. You MUST unlock these. MarkIIs are very good (and expensive) but optional.

Place the Gravitational Turrets so when the Gravitational Turrets start slowing the other turrets will start shooting. It you place the Gravitational Turrets too far away long range AI ships will destroy you turrets before the AI ships get in range of your turrets. In this screenshot I've also added a Hardened Force Field Generator and Tractor Beam Turrets next to the Gravitational Turret. This will buy you even more time. Unless there's a lot of Bombers it will take long before the AI ships have drilled trough that Force Field AND destroyed the Gravitational and Tractor Beam Turrets. Hell.. you could even add Flak and Lightning Turrets under that Force Field if you're feeling rich (they're expensive so repairing them is expensive. Also because of their short range they WILL be destroyed.) As you may or may not know. Placing a turret under a Force Field will reduce the turret's damage by 75%. Flak and Lightning Turrets' damage is only reduced by 25%.


You can also add EMP Minefields in front of the turrets so the paralyzed ships will be in range of your turrets.


I also recommend placing Area Minefields between hostile wormholes and your command station. Like this:
How to stop a wave in 3 seconds:
Time: 4:02:22
Enemies left: 631


Time: 4:02:25
Enemies left: 173


I strongly recommend unlocking Area Minefields when wave sizes are close to ~1000 ships. Use the line placing to line place them between the hostile wormholes and the command station. (Alt+Right click on the background-->line placing-->enable packed line. make a line by first clicking on point A then B. Then hold shift and start placing)

Probably the best turrets to unlock are:
1. MarkI Gravitational Turrets
2. Heavy Beam Cannons
3. Basic Turrets
4. Spider/Missile Turrets

Heavy Beam Cannon might actually be a bit overpowered. Nothing game breaking though. The have long range, very high dps and aoe damage. The MarkIV is IN-SANE and awesome! You have to try it! But hey it should be.. unlocking MarkIV HBC costs 9000 knowledge (3 planets = ~+60 AIP). I like to manually control HBCs and order them to shoot at a huge pile of AI ships. They will destroy 1000 ships in no time.

MarkII and III Basic Turrets are really cheap and good at destroying heavy and ultra heavy ships (some starships, armor ships, spire stealth battleships and tractor platforms etc) and Missile Frigates. I actually consider Missile Frigates the most dangerous of the "triangle ships" (Missile Firgate-->Fighter-->Bomber-->Missile Frigate) because of the long range. They out range all Gravitational Turrets and will be able to destroy your turrets faster than other triangle ships.

Spider and Missile Turrets are very similar. Both of them have very long range (Spider has infinite and is immune to radar dampening though) and have damage multipliers vs Polycrystal (Bombers) and Medium (Some fleet ships but most importantly Guardians (The AIs have a bad habit of sending ~30 MarkV Guardians in CPAs)). Missile Turrets have better base damage and do more damage vs multipliers. Spider Turrets on the other hand are immune to radar dampening, have infinite range, fire instantly (No projectile travel time = no 10 turrets shooting at a target that is already dead). It depends on situation which you want to unlock. Both cost 3000 Knowledge. Pick your poison.

Generally good and safe tech unlocks:
MarkIIs of fleet ships (MarkIIs only if you have access to Advanced Factory and you are sure you can defend the AF)
MarkIIs Raid, Leech, Plasmasiege, Heavy Bomber and Riot Starships.
MarkIs and IIs of Zenith and Spire Starships
MarkI Gravitatonal Turrets, HBCs, Basic Turrets, Spider Turrets and Missile Turrets.
Both minefields (EMP and Area)
MarkII Hardened Force Field Generators
MarkII Scouts
MarkII Engineers
MarkIII Harvesters

What you should unlock depends on your play style, how you want to play and the AIs you're playing against and what ships the AIs have unlocked.

About bonus ships:
My favourite bonus ships are Munitions Boosters, Snipers, Space Tanks and surprise surprise.. Neinzul Youngling Weasels. I recently discovered the "Zen of Weasels". I also may have discovered the Zen of Anti-Armor Ships.

Munitions Boosters are just awesome. They basically double the damage of your fleet ships and turrets. Yes. Turrets too. Park 10 Munitions Boosters next to you massive turret balls and watch AI ships go boom!.

With Snipers all you need to do is.. unlock MarkIIs of Snipers, Bombers and Riot Starships. Boom! AI pwnd! Snipers destroy Lights (Fighters), Polycrystals (Bombers) and Mediums (Guardians). Bombers destroy big stuff like Force Fields, some Guard Posts and Fortresses. Riots basically do no damage but they will destroy enemy's engines so Snipers can easily clean up everything.

Space Tanks have very high DPS. They're like Bombers. Except in addition to having damage multiplier vs big stuff and Artillery (Missile Frigates) they also do bonus damage vs Polycrystals (Bombers). If you choose Space Tanks I recommend unlocking MarkII Missile Frigates to destroy AI Fighters. Bombers and Space Tank both have Polycrystal Hull type which is countered by Fighters. Fighters are countered by Missile Frigates.

Weasels are surprisingly good. Not because of their damage but because they're basically free mobile Counter Missile Turrets. They're also very durable, spammable (put a Space Dock on loop to build any Neinzul Youngling ships) so they will be able to soak a lot of damage and thus protect other ships and turrets. They're pretty good at destroying Bombers too.

MarkIIs of Anti-Armor Ships, Missile Frigates and Riot Starships = awesome. Add Counter Missile Turrets when defending.

[Mephology]

Thanks for the welcome. I had hoped it was something that I overlooked, but I guess it just takes time (alot) to deal with the core eyes. The detailed information Kahuna is great.

Specific questions:

• You said "MarkIIs of fleet ships (MarkIIs only if you have access to Advanced Factory and you are sure you can defend the AF)": Did you mean IIIs if you have the advanced factory?
• Can I ask why you think the MarkII Engineers are worth it?  More engineers available? Faster repair rate on turrets? This does not seem like an obvious choice for spending 1000 knowledge.
• How do you have enough knowledge to purchase all those upgrades and keep your AI progress low?
• Is there a decent calculator or excel sheet out there to plan tech upgrades?  I was thinking of doing that, but was curious if there was something already developed.

[zoutzakje]

repair rate of engineers is indeed faster at higher mark (I believe so at least), but the only reason I unlock mk II engineers is because I want to get mk III engineers. Yes, those can teleport. A very useful unlock as it allows you to repair your units in enemy territory more easily, plus they can get anyhwere in your empire in no time.

Keeping AIP low is not that important. My games often end with 500-600 AIP. What's important is finding the right balance between keeping AIP low and not letting the AIP get any higher than you (think you) can handle. Taking out datacenters, all 4 co-processors and making use of maybe a superterminal helps to keep your AIP low if you need it.

Everybody has a different playstyle in this game, but my own involves a lot of gravity, tractor, lightning turrets and heavy beam cannons for defense. They always seem to do their job flawlessly.

Don't put any AI core or homeworlds on alert carelessly, keep threat low at all times, keep enemy numbers at bordering worlds low (especially the high mk worlds), do proper gate raiding (kill all but 1) and you should generally be fine.

[Kahuna]

• You said "MarkIIs of fleet ships (MarkIIs only if you have access to Advanced Factory and you are sure you can defend the AF)": Did you mean IIIs if you have the advanced factory?

Yes. You can unlock MarkIIIs if you have an AF or if you know you will soon have one and will be able to defend it reliably.

• Can I ask why you think the MarkII Engineers are worth it?  More engineers available? Faster repair rate on turrets? This does not seem like an obvious choice for spending 1000 knowledge.

MarkII Engineers are a good unlock IF you have a strong economy. MarkIII Harvesters and home planet + 2 planets with average of 8 resource asteroids or more. Btw if a planet has 6 or more resource asteroids it will produce more resources with MarkIII Harvesters than a MarkIII Economical Command Station. That's why many people consider Economical Command Stations slightly underpowered. They're ok in some situations.

• How do you have enough knowledge to purchase all those upgrades and keep your AI progress low?

You can't unlock everything. You have to choose the "right" techs. Keeping the AIP low can be hard sometimes. Depends on map and the AIs you're playing against. That's why I like to unlock MarkII Scouts and Raid Starships after capturing 1 or 2 additional planets. With those you will be able to find and destroy Data Centers, Co-Processors and the Super Terminal (Don't destroy the Super Terminal before hacking ofcourse. Just find it.). I always play 10/10 games so I always try to keep the AIP under 100. Also I mostly keep only ~4-6 planets.

• Is there a decent calculator or excel sheet out there to plan tech upgrades?  I was thinking of doing that, but was curious if there was something already developed.

Nope. I just use Notepad and calculator.

EDIT: I just checked out your save file. You have good tech unlocks. It looks like you're in a good situation and will certainly win that game. However you have a lot of planets. 11 planets + home planet = +220 AIP just from capturing the planets. You have also spread turrets between many planets. On high difficulty levels you can effectively defend 3 planets at ~100 AIP. Maybe 4. Deciding which planets you're going to capture is part of the strategy. Usually if a planet has less than 5 resource asteroids I never capture that planet unless it has something I need. An ARS or a Golem for example. Maybe some Fabricators. Defending distant capturable objects (AF or Fabricators) is quite hard on high difficulty levels. They will usually be destroyed by CPAs or Exos. What you might wanna do is capture few planets adjacent to your home world and choose 2 capturables and then fortify your home planet and the 2 capturables.

Check out my save file below. Maybe it would give you some ideas.

[Martyn van Buren]

I would recommend against getting too neurotic about AIP on lower difficulties --- 3-5 planets is (I gather from better players) a lot on diffs 9 to 10, but 10-15 planets is definitely manageable up to the difficulty 7-8 range without getting into a massive war of attrition, and I think it makes for a more fun game.  If you're playing 6/7 I don't think it's a bad idea to take some worlds just because they have good resources or something.  I still do it, anyway.

That said, do bear in mind that you really don't need to chain worlds together to be able to defend yourself --- even if it's on a path you have to send ships over all the time, once you've killed off all the guardposts and the warp gate an AI planet is not going to make a lot of trouble for you.

[Kahuna]

I just updated my "Beachheading" thread and wrote a new one called "Ship Combos". You might wanna read them.
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11391.msg129159.html#msg129159
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11996.msg129236.html#msg129236