How to play AI War?

[junker154]

So I've completed two games with a friend and we had a great time. Although we're still in the mindset of other 4x games where we conquer everything and eradicate every AI planet. We played on easy and it was a challenge at times but overall relevatively easy. I reckon that the steamroller tactic doesn't work all that well against the AI on higher difficulties.

I've read through the wiki and in a lot of threads about outpost mechanics, neutering, leaving command posts and overall how the AI behaves. I want to get into detail but overall I'm a bit overwhelmed how to manage the AI on higher difficulties. It seems to be more like a hit and run guerilla warfare instead of amassing huge armies and steamrolling everything. What is some good advice in terms of understanding the AI and how to properly counter it, how to organise myself and how to use the AI mechanics to my advantage.

Having a great time thus far.

[alocritani]

I'm also quite a noob, having played only 2 games at 7/7 but I can suggest you to start with a 7/7 game with vanilla + chivalric for each AI , or at least random + chivalric.
This way you can start testing the "real" ai without worrying too much about losing irreplaceable structures (mainly constructor).
even in this way, you'll quick change idea about conquering everything!

also I found really useful the idea of choke points (whipping boys).
Finally I tried to focus more on a limited type of ships, unlocking higher levels for them, instead of several different type of low-level ships.
I also started with "basic" options: no spire, no golem, etc... and still first game was not so easy.

this is what I discovered by experience:

• Read Kahuna's guide (link in his signature)
• riot starships are very useful for slowing down incoming enemy ships, especially where you cannot build spider snipers
• assault transports are a must, for me, giving you ability to completely skip one or more planets.
• don't underestimate enemy special forces and/or threat: clear them often.
• never underestimate an incoming CPA
• pay *lot* of attention to what you pop and where you go. You can trigger by mistake an alarm post on a neighbor planet at the wrong time. Be especially careful with eyes.
• having lot of ships on a planet may convince AI to not attack this planet with threat fleet. Be careful if you want to remove these ships: a sudden attack may happen.
• consider assigning a mercenary dock to a specific group and set resource-limit to this group: this way dock will build only if you have enough resources (in CTRLS tab)
• hacking (especially sabotage) can remove lot of problems, at the right time

[junker154]

Thank you, chokepoints and the whipping boy tactic worked quite well our last game.

Unfortunately I still don't understand how AI reinforcements work and how it is calculated. Also can the AI warp ships deep into my systems, do I need to destroy a strucuture or am I unable to stop this? What benefits gives neutering? How effective are Warp Jammers, I used them at their homeworld and they weren't alerted which was good but once I got inside their system, about a 4000 ships spawned right in my face. What's the AI reserve, is it a set amount of ships that act as a reserve which can be depleted or will it generate?

So many questions.

[Aklyon]

The less gates you have to deal with on your border, the more focused your defense can be. You don't need to neuter everything to get this effect, just the gate raiding part will do. However, if you do neuter everything, its much easier to fly through there if you'd prefer to not take the AIP hit from claiming the system.

Warp Jammers are for keeping a system safe from waves, at the expense of not having a potentially more useful command station there instead. They only effect the system they are in and neighboring warp gates.

For the Strategic Reserve, there was an excellent post recently about it by Toranth.

[alocritani]

Regarding AI warping deep inside your world, as Aklyon said, in order to avoid it you need to destroy gates.
Also, eyes also count as warp gates, so the best way to be sure is to use the "hostile wormholes" galaxy map mode (default W) that will show for every planet the number of wormholes that can be used by AI to warp ships to that planet. Try it and I'll think you'll understand it better than my explanation. Remember to keep warp gates close to your whipping boy, of course.

Also, on planet map wormholes have different colors: bright red means that waves can come from it, while a lighter red means that no waves can came. green means that neighbor is friendly, while yellow means that the incoming wave will come from it (if you have advanced warp sensor)

There are also some guardpost (counter-warp guard post, IIRC) that can warp AI war ships everywhere when destroyed (it's explained in description, however)

Warp gates are interesting so I suggest you to have a look at this topic

Regarding reinforcement, if you really want to fully understand it you can activate "reinforcement log" in advanced tab of option panel. It will generate a text file with all the formula and logic for every reinforcement that happened in the game. Give it a try, once, just to see.

Basically AI reinforces worlds that are alerted. a world is "on alert" if it's close to a not AI-controlled world (so owned by you or without any command station) or close to a world where are lot of human ships. You can see that a planet is "on alert" on galaxy map: it's written in intelligence tooltip and they also have red outline on the same map.
every planet have a maximum number of ships that can be "hold" there: the more guard posts there are, the higher this number.
This is the reason why neutering (destroying everything except command station) is so effective, reducing max number of enemy ships that can be there.

the 4000 ships that spawned when you entered homeworld is definitely the reserve deployed to welcome you!

[junker154]

That was insanely informative, thank you guys. This is the stuff that I wanted to know.

Yeah my friend and I always tried to have a hub system as a major point for the AI to attack, we fortified it very densely and they didn't stand a chance. This gave us some breathing room to concentrate on the defense.

Our next game will be a 7/7 of something, we felt that the game became to easy and it was just busywork at the end.

[Aklyon]

Well if you ever want something rather hard in 7/7, stick Vicious Exotic anywhere. It is not amused by your shenanigans.

[junker154]

I shall give it a try. Soon I will try a singleplayer campaign, I'm pretty sure that it will be far more difficult alone.

[Kahuna]

[...]I'm a bit overwhelmed how to manage the AI on higher difficulties. It seems to be more like a hit and run guerilla warfare instead of amassing huge armies and steamrolling everything. What is some good advice in terms of understanding the AI and how to properly counter it, how to organise myself and how to use the AI mechanics to my advantage.
Having a great time thus far.

Glad to hear you're enjoying the game.
 

On higher difficulties you want to avoid fighting and losing resources. You're gonna wanna use (Assault) Transports to get past AI planets. Constant small losses will add up after a couple of hours. I only play on 10/10 difficulty and it's often the economic attrition that will stop me. So you should know how many economic unlocks you need to survive.. "do I need MarkIII Harvesters or MarkII Harvesters and MarkII X Command Stations?" (for example MarkII vs MarkI Military Command Station is almost same as +-2 MarkII Resource Harvesters)


When you're going to attack an AI planet.. depending on how heavily defended the AI planet is .. you might wanna beachhead. The top 3 beachheading turrets are: 1: Mark>=II Needler Turrets, 2: Sniper Turrets and 3: Missile Turrets.

Needler turrets will destroy Missile Frigates (Artillery hull) the Force Fields protecting some of the Guard Posts. Mark>=II Needler turrets have 8000 radar dampening so the Guard Post wont be able to shoot at the Needler turrets.. but the Needler turrets will be able to shoot at the Force Field. And when the Force Field is destroyed.. you can either use the Sniper Turrets or you fleet ships to destroy the Guard Post.

Sniper Turrets have infinite range and they're immune to radar dampening so they can be used to destroy the Guard Posts. They also counter Bombers (Polycrystal hull) and Guardians (Medium hull). They're also handy for aggroing guarding AI ships (AI ships that are on stand down mode (you have to manually target them)).

Missile Turrets also counter Bombers and Guardians but they do more damage than Sniper Turrets.

This is how I beachhead (and hack)


You can also just pop the AI Command Station.. capture the planet (build your own Command Station) and then "beachhead" the planet.
 

The AIs will only attack you when they send waves or other attacks (waves, CPAs, Exos) or when Hybdrids or free threat ships "see a weakness" (have access to a poorly defended planet).  So even if there's a planet with 1050 MarkIV ships and 30 Hybrids right next to one of your planets they're not going to attack as long as there's no "Threat" (open the galaxy map and press T to see threat) The Hybrids might attack if you don't have strong defenses though.

You need to control and know where the AIs will attack:

So build whipping boys and take all the attacks on those planets. I have a couple of not so well defended beachhead planets but I don't care if I lose them. They just work as beachheads so my Transports don't "self destruct after x amount of hops". I always leave an Assault Transports with a Colony Ship and a couple of Engineers and Rebuilders so I can capture those planets again whenever I want if they get destroyed.

[junker154]

Our new game against the 7/7 is far going far worse, the enemy sends endless waves.

I usually research all the economical boosts for my extractors and orbital stations, it's a must have in order to pump out ships. I nearly got wiped out and had to retreat to my friends home system, luckily I got everything back but it's a major challenge. I discovered the loop production mode in the docks and I'm constantly producing ships, this really cripples my economy.

We're still steamrolling everything and it doesn't work that well anymore. I'm trying to get a better grasp of the mechanics of the AI.

Beachheading is actually really great, in our last game we created a beachhead in their home world. I build tons of turrets and shields, they took down enemy ships and buildings. Actually I put some Neizul ships in the forcefields and they prove quite effective, the constant wave of ships keeps the AI occupied and provides me some time.

Also what benefits does hacking provide? I tried it once on an enemy planet and the AI responded with nearly 2000 ships, he almost took me out and it was quite close. I didn't fully understand the modules that the hacking station provides, the consequences are quite harsh, so is it worth at all to hack?

Thanks for the informative guide. We're still trying to figure out how to properly set up whipping boys, sometimes the waves will still focus on other planets instead of our whipping boys, despite trying to get the max alert and occupying hub worlds. I still don't get how all the different kinds of reinforcements work, also how do I get rid of warpgates? Do I really need to destroy every single warp gate in the world in order to eliminate those warp attacks? Also when I press W on the galaxy map, there's some information about warpgates, how does that exactly work?

[Aklyon]

Well, at 7/7 the AI takes off its hypothetical gloves it had from 6 and lower. If you try to tacklehug everything, it will clobber you over the head like someone who does not like being tackled or hugged. You'll have to get past that if you want to get anywhere without dropping back down diffs.
For loop production dragging down your econ, theres a pause button when its needed, but also, if you put it into a control group, theres a CTRL setting that auto-pauses when you're under X amount of resources. I haven't used it, but I'm pretty sure theres someone here who can explain it better.

What AIs are you fighting? Also yes, if you do not destroy adjacent warpgates (adjacent being 'next ot player-controlled planet), the AI will consider them a valid target to use. Its less of an issue to do if you aren't trying to take every planet, but also is an issue if you destroy every single gate.

[zoutzakje]

hi there =)
I really want to help you out and explain this game to you, but i honestly don't know where to start. It's so huge and complicated that even experienced players like us get overwhelmed sometimes. Luckily there's a lot of good and experienced players who lurk these forums from time to time so everything you need to know will get answered properly eventually.
First thing you got to know is that there is not one specific way to play this game. Many different tactics and strategies can work. That being said, your options become more limited the higher up you go in difficulty and there are some basic rules that will always prove to be a guide in the right direction.

I've learned that the most important thing in this game is to stay in control of things. Of course depending on the options and settings you've turned on, there will always be chaos in the galaxy. But the more things you control, the better it will turn out for you.
First off there is neutering.
I consider warp gate raiding, destroying guard posts and killing off most of enemy forces on a planet to be part of neutering. Neutering is what you do to keep control of things. You go to every single world that's adjacent to one of your own and you take out all the warp gates, except one. By leaving one warp gate active, YOU decide where all the regular waves will come from. Keep in mind that objects such as eyes (sentry eyes, parasite eyes, etc), alarm posts and warp gate guardians also count as warp gates. Pick out a world of which you assume you will never have to take or a world that you think is way to difficult to take yet or something like that. Pick out a world that has only 1 wormhole leading into your territory. Fortify that single wormhole. Even if your fleet is lightyears away, a good turretball can hold off an incredible amount of enemy ships. My personal choices are tractor turrets, gravity turrets, Heavy Beam Cannons, Lightning turrets, Flak turrets and maybe sniper/spider turrets depending on the situation. Place the turrets in range of the wormhole but as close to your command center as possible, since that's the enemies most likely target. Get higher mark heavy beam cannons if waves are becoming challenging. Use your other turrets to protect your other planets (just keep your homeworld better protected than the rest). Always use grav/tractor turrets. I personally always forget to use mines but they can come in real handy too.

Don't just take out the warp gates, leave the wormhole guardposts alone but take out all the others. The less places the enemy has to build up forces, the easier it will be for you to keep their numbers low or travel through their space.
Attacking structures like warp gates and guard posts (or even just moving around in their territory) will "wake" Ai ships from their fixed positions and they become part of a group called "threat". Threat ships will stalk you and look for an opportunity to attack anywhere, so take them out before they get a chance to do so. Always keep an eye out on your threat count. In many cases, threat is more important than AIP. If a CPA or exo wave just spawned, hover over the word threat and find out exactly where they are coming from (assuming you've scouted properly, but more on that in a bit), follow their movement and divide your fleet/reserve turrets accordingly. You'll gain control over the seemingly randomness from the CPA/exo this way and it will help a great deal.
Don't confuse threat ships with Special Forces. The SF roam around and protect worlds they find important, often surprising you with large numbers. They only show up in AI/neutral worlds, either protecting something or just passing through. They will never attack a world that is already yours.

Next there is scouting. If you play with extra fog of war and show unexplored planets off, you'll learn to scout manually properly, like i did.
At the start, you won't be able to scout much at all. Mk I scouts are useless (1-2 hops at best usually) so in order to find a proper target i usually unlock mk II scouts right from the start, but they'll only get you so far. Once you got a little bit of spare knowledge (and no proper target to take over anymore) you'll unlock mk III scouts and also mk II scout starships (250 knowledge only). Then you put all of them together, mk II + III scouts and mk I + II scout starships. Make them group move using g+click or g+control+click to move them through a wormhole. Manually maneuver them to avoid as many enemy ships/structures as possible when they come out of a wormhole. Always leave the most damaged scout of the lowest mark behind, before you move on to the next world. You leave a scout behind so that you will always know what's going on in that world. Never leave the starships behind, because they'll help your group survive longer. First time you do this you should be able to scout at least 10-15 worlds in a 7/7 game.

I'm not sure i can help you with economics since I have a different playstyle than most people. I never build economics stations. Never. I upgrade my harvesters to mark III from the start of the game and for the rest i build logistic command stations everywhere. I don't skip planets to keep my AIP low, I scout for a target and then capture every single planet along the way, doing all of the above. I rely heavily on reducing enemy speed and increasing my own, creating fastways on key connections using Zenith Space Time Manipulators. My fleet will be wherever it needs to be in no time. In a 100 planet galaxy, I usually take 30 to 40 planets. With so many worlds, both economy and knowledge is hardly an issue. Of course I have to adjust my playstyle a bit for most AI types but it works in general. I'm no 10/10 pro, but i can beat easy/medium AI types on 9/9 (haven't tried hard types yet).
Steamrolling can still work, it just takes a different approach.

Hacking can be a very useful tool. You can hack all sorts of different things. You can hack an ARS (Advanced research station) to choose out of 3 different ship types. You can hack an AI back-up server to either prevent the AI from ever spawning a particular ship type again or to take that ship type for yourself. You can use the hacker to gain extra knowledge from worlds that you don't control or you can use it to sabotage certain annoying AI structures.
You can do all sorts of fun stuff with hacking, the only problem is that it costs points called Hacking Progress Balance. Basically your HPB is the same as your unreduced AIP (so if you have 100 AIP and destroy a datacenter, your AIP will go down but your HPB will still be 100). Hover above the words Hacking Progress Balance and you will see some info about how much HPB you've spend and how much every individual action costs. Each time you use a hacking action, the price of using it again will go up. The more points you've spend, the stronger the enemy forces that will spawn while you hack. If your hacking balance goes below 0 because you hack to much, the enemy retaliation will be severe, possibly more than you can handle.
Using the Super Terminal to reduce AIP also costs HPB. So spend your hacking points wisely.

There is so much more to be said about this game, but I'm done for today. I'm sure you've heard a lot of this already but I just wanted to cover some stuff that's been important to me and I hope I've still been of some help =)

[Kahuna]

EDIT:

I consider warp gate raiding, destroying guard posts and killing off most of enemy forces on a planet to be part of neutering.

I'd say Gate Raiding and Neutering are 2 different things.

You go to every single world that's adjacent to one of your own and you take out all the warp gates, except one.

If you can defend more than 1 planet vs waves you should because destroying Warp Gates increases AIP.

Place the turrets in range of the wormhole but as close to your command center as possible, since that's the enemies most likely target.

Could someone explain why turrets "should be in range of the wormhole"? I'd say you want to build everything as far as possible from the wormhole because you want to buy as much time as possible. When you build everything as far as possible Sniper (and Missile) Turrets will weaken the waves before they get in range of the Turrets and the Command Station. Also if you're going to use minefields (properly) (and you should) you will need some space between the wormhole and the turrets.

I'm not sure i can help you with economics since I have a different playstyle than most people. I never build economics stations. Never. I upgrade my harvesters to mark III from the start of the game.

I don't think anyone uses Economic Command Stations anymore. They're pretty much garbage compared to Harvesters and other Command Stations.

for the rest i build logistic command stations everywhere. [...] I rely heavily on reducing enemy speed and increasing my own, creating fastways on key connections using Zenith Space Time Manipulators. My fleet will be wherever it needs to be in no time.

Mark II and III seem like a waste of Knowledge but Mark Is are fine. I think Zenith Space Time Manipulators cost too much Knowledge for what they do. I mean they just make your ships move faster but do nothing to help you stop Waves/CPAs or give more firepower for attacks. Assault Transports are much more usefull and I think they're fast enough.

I don't skip planets to keep my AIP low, I scout for a target and then capture every single planet along the way, doing all of the above. [...] In a 100 planet galaxy, I usually take 30 to 40 planets. With so many worlds, both economy and knowledge is hardly an issue.

So you play on 9/9 difficulty? What's your AIP usually after you have captured all of those planets? How do you defend all of those planets and how big are the waves at X AIP?

[junker154]

Thanks! I'm playing against 7/7 Vanilla and Sledgehammer. They're sending a lot of waves but we managed to secure our territory a lot.

I guess I'll stop building economic stations. They really don't seem that valuable. We have no problem with defenses. We started building our turrets at the orbital stations, it's far more effective.

In our current game the AI spawns a lot of weak but smaller ships, they're ripping us apart due to huge numbers. What's a good counter against them. Also he has a lot of Spire Clusterships which tear our numbers down by the hundreds. We might hack this if it works but the AI wrath might be to much for us. The Clusterships never seem to die.

[Kahuna]

I guess I'll stop building economic stations. They really don't seem that valuable.

In my opinion Military Command Stations are the best option at the moment. The other ones need a buff (excluding Warp Jammer (maybe)) If you need stronger defenses at some point I recommend unlocking Mark II Military Command Stations because it will increase the firepower of all turrets on that planet by 50%. It's almost like having 50% more turrets. Mark I increases the firepower only by 19% so Mark II's damage boost is more than double and it costs 4000 Knowledge. Seems like a good deal to me. The engine destroying rail guns are very usefull too.

We started building our turrets at the orbital stations, it's far more effective.

Exactly.

About the smaller "swarming" ships: Just look at their Hull type. Do they have "Swarmer" or "Ultra-light" hull or what? Then unlock (more of) something that has a damage multiplier versus that hull type. For example Missile Frigates ans MRLS Turrets are very good at destroying Swarmers.
So if you want to counter something look at their Hull type and see which ships or turrets have a damage multiplier vs that Hull type.

The best way to counter Spire Railcluster ships is to disable Ancient Shadows expansion.