Hi everyone, i finally managed to get a double godlike achievement after playing AI wars for a week (winning 2 AI 10 without any handicaps or bonuses.)
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198033888074/stats/AIWar?tab=achievements and thought i start a thread to see how other people have managed to do it in the specifically for latest 4.0+ version, given that i heard it's supposed to be harder. Well, i'll start by sharing some strategies i used to get the achievement, of which many can be applied to games at lower difficulty.
Game Setup X map with 10 planets. Human Maraduar/resistance fighter enabled. (10 planets make game fast, other settings to spice things up)
X-X-X-X-X-H-X (H was my starting position)
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X
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X
AI 10 Zenith descendant and Support Corps with no AI plots enabled (to make your things slightly easier)
Ship Selected for HW (Shield Bearer)
ZR and CoN expansion enabled.
Game Strategy My starting research goes like this
Research Mobile Repair Station
Research Flagship
Research Zenith Flagship
Research Metal Harvester Mark II
later research spire starship
Opening Moves
Build 20 Fighters, 10 bombers, 10 Shield Bearers
Build Leech starship.
Scout neighbouring system. In my case, i found viral shredders mark II and III, which were key to my winning strategy which i will explain later.
Send ur leech starship with fleet ships and head directly for viral shredders, steal as many as possible before escaping out of system (hopefully, the system is Mark 1 or II). Destroy that warp gate in that system if your HW has 2 wormholes. (so you are left with 1 hostile wormhole)
At around the 5min Mark, you will get a warp warning. At this point of time, all i could do is pray, because what I usually get 2000 ships warping in, while i had like 50+ ships, with a leechship and flagship. I had to restart a few times till i got lucky, in which the AI warped in 1000 mirrors and 1000 frigates plus a bunch of starships. If the AI warps in 1000 bombers, it's a GG.
Now, the next step i did was to build an forcefield, because starships will tend to head directly to your command station. u need an extra forcefield so that you can repair one and keep the other one up at the same time, to prevent your command station from being blown up.
So what happend once everything warped in was that in a min, my viral shredders multiplied exponentially to around 1000 shredders after killing the mirrors, which then ripped through the missile frigates like paper. The only threats at that point were starships that went straight for the command center, thus, the extra forcefield is needed to buy time for ur viral shredders to replicate and destroy the frigates. Keep track of your energy level and power down shredders as neccessary to prevent brownouts.
Once I survived the first wave, I was set to win the game. With my 800 shredders, i quickly took my 2 neighbouring mark I/II systems with ease, bringing in leech starships and mobile repair stations (MRS) to capture and instant heal my captured ships on the spot. Then i applied the following tactical strategies for the rest of the systems in the game, which were mark III/IV/V.
Tactical StrategyScout System.
Priority Target Listed in Order
1. Command Center
2. AI Eye
3. Ion Cannons (If mark III or above)
4. Orbital Mass Driver
5. Guard Posts.
Normally, what i prefer to do is to set up tons of tractor turrets/grav turrents, MRS under forcefields (can add cloaker for additional protection) and entire battle field on the other side of the wormhole. If the system is lightly defended and my troops outnumber more than a 2:1 ratio, i usually just hit the command center and let everything come out to attack me. I barely lose any troops due to my invulnerable MRS under forcefield healing my troops. Once the enemy system is emptied of defenders , then i can move my troops in to clear the rest of the system, provided there are no AI eyes. If there are, i will just send in my all my starships to destroy them, before moving everything else in.
However, it is more often the case that AI eyes are protected by forcefields, the command center is protected by command station guard post and the system is heavily defended, in which you have to do things the hard way. My personal perference is to 1. build 10-20 transports,
2. load up all my starships (into 1 transport
3. destroy guard posts to reduce the number of enemies and reinforcements in the system.
4. Rinse and repeat to reduce the number of defenders to a reasonable size you can cope with if they attack through your wormhole.
5. Then, take out the command center (or the command center guard post first) and follow the strategy mentioned in the previous paragraph.
6. For core worlds, you do the same thing, except that you have to destroy most of the guard posts and then you can just warp in your entire fleet, together with your MRS under forcefields and mop up the defenders. Remember to keep your entire fleet close to your MRS to minimize casualities. A typical loss rate against 200-300 IV/Core ships against my 1500 ship fleet would be less than 50 ships, usually of lower mark levels. At the same time, you are also gaining ships through reclaimation. Remember to set reclaimed ship rally so that they automove to your MRS and get protected by FF while being healed at the same time.
The worst case scenario though, would be attacking a core homeworld with AI eyes under forcefield. Since you can't destroy the command center, to launch an assault to win the game, you will not only have the thin the defenders by destroying the guard posts using the transport strategy mentioned above, you will also have to destroy the AI eye. Some strategies i can think of could include using EMP, since AI eyes are not invulnerable to EMP. Build tons of transport and load up your half of your fleet with 4 MRS into transports. Send your emp through, send transports to eye, unload your fleet, focus fire and pray that you have 120s to disable the forcefield protecting the AI Eye so that you can damage it. It might require a few tries, so play safe and try to withdraw with most of your troops intact. Would recommend you destroy most of the guard posts before trying this out, otherwise the number of defenders will be too great for this strategy to work effectively. Luckily, in my game, i never had this scenario.
My entire fleet in this game ended up around 2500 being a bunch of mark III/IV/V reclaimed units, with 1500 units being mark II/III/IV viral shredders. The only fleet ship that i upgraded to tech level III was my shield bearer, which was a became an incredible damage soaker for my fleet and with MRS. Never really bothered to build fighters/bombers/frigates as these can be easily stolen and i hit the ship CAP for these units way before i even attacked the core homeworlds. I ended the game at the 4h20min mark with an ai progress of around 300 (Mark III)
After writing so much, i think i shall try a Co-Op Game! Add me (AiWarsMP) if you are up for a co-op game soon!
Do share your stories on how you got Godlike and survive the sick waves!
