I Feel the Need to Neuter

[Hurmferd]

I've made my way into the midgame of an 80-planet game at difficulty 7/7 and have noticed huge build-up of AI fleets on my borders at AIP = 139.  I had left these planets alone (with the exception of some judicious warp gate-raiding), but now believe that I should've been neutering these adjacent AI planets since I'm seeing some planets reinforcing with over 1,000 ships!  These are not CPA's or waves;  It's the AI taking notice of my growing capabilities and taking action by reinforcing the heck out of its bordering planets.

So I'm beginning to take the following approach:  If an AI planet borders one of my own (and hence is on alert and receiving regular reinforcements), then I must neuter it.  I feel the need to neuter!  Only the paranoid survive.

Do you experts agree?

H.

[BobTheJanitor]

I'm no expert, but I am opinionated and talkative.  I can say that you want to minimize your exposure as much as possible. So a world having a lot of wormholes coming off of it should be one of the factors you weigh when deciding if it's worth taking or leaving that world. If you have to take and hold a world, then you should probably at least gate raid around it. Neutering isn't always necessary, if you can keep enough firepower parked there to keep the AI from sending ships over. It doesn't take as much as you'd think, really. The danger of course is if you don't gate raid all around that world and a wave hits, that could tip the firepower measurement too far and you'll end up with a wave plus a giant stalking force, which is a good way to lose. Neutering tends to take a lot of time for not much immediate payback, and while you're expending time and resources on wiping out that world, the AI is still reinforcing elsewhere. It's a careful balancing act, for sure!

[Philo]

If you destroy the warp gate but leave all the guardposts, the AI still gets reinforcements for the guardposts right?

And in other news, I don't really see gate raiding that effective. Last game I raided a planet (destroyed everything except the CS) and in an hour that planet was back to 780 troops.

They didn't even have wormhole guardposts IIRC.

Edit:
Oh yeah, and the planet one jump away went to "AI alerted, reinforcements expected" status. Soo... What does raiding really accomplish? You can't even gather knowledge from there.

[Shrugging Khan]

Just go in and blow them to sh!t. Use golems if you have them, Warheads if you don't care about a little AIP, or lure them through a fortified wormhole with some fleet ships.

Wiping reinforcements away if a chore that sometimes needs to be taken care of.

[BobTheJanitor]

If you destroy the warp gate but leave all the guardposts, the AI still gets reinforcements for the guardposts right?

Yes. The fewer guardposts (not counting wormhole guardposts though, they can have reinforcements placed at them, but they don't increase the reinforcement cap), the fewer reinforcements the AI can put on that world. That's basically the point of neutering a planet. Although frankly I wish we had a better term for it. That one always makes me want to cross my legs.

And in other news, I don't really see gate raiding that effective. Last game I raided a planet (destroyed everything except the CS) and in an hour that planet was back to 780 troops.

They didn't even have wormhole guardposts IIRC.

You're kind of confusing two terms here, though.

Gate raiding is specifically sending a force in to kill the warp gate and get out. This has the very specific result of preventing the AI from sending you any waves from this planet. Note that if you have other AI planets connected to your world and they still have warp gates, you'll still get waves there. You have to raid every gate on every connected to world to make a planet immune to waves. (Except for counterattack guard post waves... or warp guardians... or warp jumper AI types... or probably something else I'm forgetting)

Neutering is going in and destroying every guard post but leaving the command station up. This saves you on AIP but keeps the AI from being able to reinforce there as quickly. The AI can still reinforce there though as long as you leave the command station up. And if it's alerted, of course it will. It's just that instead of adding, say, 200 ships in a reinforcement it may only be able to add 30. But leave it alone for long enough and the numbers will get up there again.

Edit:
Oh yeah, and the planet one jump away went to "AI alerted, reinforcements expected" status. Soo... What does raiding really accomplish? You can't even gather knowledge from there.

As long as you have ships on a planet, (except cloaked ships like scouts) the planets one jump away will temporarily alert. Once your ships leave and stay gone for a little bit, they drop back off alert status, so this doesn't hurt you too much in the long term. This can actually work a little bit to your advantage. The AI only gets a certain number of reinforcements to spread over all its worlds, and of course the majority of them go to alerted worlds. So if you temporarily alert several worlds at once, those reinforcements aren't just piling up on your doorstep.

[Hurmferd]

From what I'm reading from responses, it appears that neutering is not absolutely necessary and whether to neuter a planet should be decided on a case-by-case basis.

I have a lot of concerns about these bordering planets and, since this is my first game, I'll probably exercise caution and neuter them, mainly because:

1. A lot of the planets that I'm neutering are in the rear of my empire, and the AI's buildup along my borders leaves me vulnerable to a sucker punch from the AI when my guard is down.  I'll probably continue the practice of neutering all adjacent planets because as I move forward, those planets along my front will eventually become my rear.  I guess that I fall into the cautious category of players, eh?  I don't plan to neuter any planets that are more than 1 hop from my own since these planets would not be on alert.  

2. I would not likely be able to withstand an assault of over 1,000+ ships from these bordering planets.  The planets that I'm targeting to neuter are all MkIV while only a small portion of my own current fleet is Mk3.  I believe that I have sufficient turrets and mines to hold off these attacks for a bit of time, but I'm beginning to see such a large number of reinforcements that, without neutering, I'd either have to build up my rear guard fleets to over 500 to 700 (or more) on the main planets, or I'd need to take a huge risk in moving my fleet forward.  Are you folks OK with the AI building up over 1,000+ ships on its planets that border your own, even though your main fleet may be 6 or 8 hops away?  

3. I'm trying to move the majority of my forces forward for exploration and adventurism and, as mentioned above, this would leave me susceptible to rear attacks.  It takes time to neuter these planets, yeah, but I can do it without losing a lot of forces if I'm patient.  I have a hunch that if I take the time now to stabilize my borders--and don't wait for the AI to amass 2,000+ ships on it's planets behind my front--then I won't be forced to withdraw my forces and defend my rear at the exact moment that I'm attempting to stomp the AI homeworlds.  It'll slow my game down for a bit while I clean up the mess on my back porch, but hopefully this will lay the groundwork for a strong offensive down the road.  

It'll be interesting to see how quickly the AI reinforces the neutered planets.  Without being neutered, I saw a number of planets jump from 400-500 ships to 1,000+ ships within what seemed like a half hour to an hour of game time.

H.

[Ramsar]

I have a lot of concerns about these bordering planets and, since this is my first game, I'll probably exercise caution and neuter them, mainly because:

1. A lot of the planets that I'm neutering are in the rear of my empire, and the AI's buildup along my borders leaves me vulnerable to a sucker punch from the AI when my guard is down.  I'll probably continue the practice of neutering all adjacent planets because as I move forward, those planets along my front will eventually become my rear.  I guess that I fall into the cautious category of players, eh?  I don't plan to neuter any planets that are more than 1 hop from my own since these planets would not be on alert. 

2. I would not likely be able to withstand an assault of over 1,000+ ships from these bordering planets.  The planets that I'm targeting to neuter are all MkIV while only a small portion of my own current fleet is Mk3.  I believe that I have sufficient turrets and mines to hold off these attacks for a bit of time, but I'm beginning to see such a large number of reinforcements that, without neutering, I'd either have to build up my rear guard fleets to over 500 to 700 (or more) on the main planets, or I'd need to take a huge risk in moving my fleet forward.  Are you folks OK with the AI building up over 1,000+ ships on its planets that border your own, even though your main fleet may be 6 or 8 hops away? 

3. I'm trying to move the majority of my forces forward for exploration and adventurism and, as mentioned above, this would leave me susceptible to rear attacks.  It takes time to neuter these planets, yeah, but I can do it without losing a lot of forces if I'm patient.  I have a hunch that if I take the time now to stabilize my borders--and don't wait for the AI to amass 2,000+ ships on it's planets behind my front--then I won't be forced to withdraw my forces and defend my rear at the exact moment that I'm attempting to stomp the AI homeworlds.  It'll slow my game down for a bit while I clean up the mess on my back porch, but hopefully this will lay the groundwork for a strong offensive down the road. 

Exactly I've lost my first campaign due to not neutering enough planets in the vicinity of my homeworld (once far enough in the campaign they started spawning carriers and before I knew it, my home command station was reduced to rubble), and as you can imagine that still haunts me and therefore I tend to use the strategy you describe here.

To reduce the resources needed to neuter planets I usually load up a transport with my 3 raid starships (and if the enemy planet has a lot of ships on it, also some cheap cannon fodder like acid sprayers or autocannons). Then I just move my starships from guard post to guard post with my transport. If my starships' health becomes too low, I send them back to my homeworld to heal. One or two strikes are normally enough to fully neuter a planet (except if it has the Spire shield sphere guard post, which I just leave alone most of the time)

[Hurmferd]

Thanks Ramsar, that helps!  I was wondering if I was just being too anal about these border planets...  Well, maybe I am anyway...

On a slightly different but very much related topic, what do you folks do about gravity drills?  

I have one planet that I'm attempting to neuter, but they have one of those darned gravity drills and I've found it impossible to neuter the planet without first taking out that darned thing (at a cost of 5 AIP)!  Not only that, but the drill is positioned in one of the worst imaginable places so that I'll need to send a suicide squad to take it out.  

Some planets with gravity drills are not a problem because either the drills are near a wormhole or the key guardposts are near a wormhole, but some planets with drills are just impossible...

H.

[BobTheJanitor]

Grav drills slow down everyone, so really you can just treat the planet like normal, but muuuuuuuuuuuuch slower. The main thing is that they don't slow down shots and they make everyone's speed equal, so long range units are drastically more powerful on a planet with a grav drill, since they get plenty of time to shoot enemies before they could ever get in range. A mobile builder beachhead with some sniper turrets, for example, could probably keep the planet cleaned pretty neatly. I haven't had to deal with grav drills very much, though, so I'm just thinking out loud. Usually I just blow them up early and then go on to treat the planet like normal.

Also back on the general topic of border planets, I just tend to take more than I probably need in order to build a good buffer around my homeworld. Leaving up AI worlds nearby, even if they're completely neutered, tends to aggravate me in the long term. I get tired of the wasted resources keeping the numbers from building up, and the simple fix of just taking the world and forgetting about it finally gets to be too tempting. I usually end up with higher AIP this way, of course, but when you have a clump of worlds with only one or two entry points to pile your turrets up on, the bigger waves aren't so bad. I just prioritize AIP reducers as much as possible.

[Red Spot]

Neuter a random planet somewhere not attached to your terf, let the AI build up over there ...

[BobTheJanitor]

Neuter a random planet somewhere not attached to your terf, let the AI build up over there ...

Although you have to keep units there to keep its attention. So unless you're willing to leave a skeleton crew to keep the planet on alert, this may not do too much to help. It won't reinforce much if you just neuter it and then leave and have no connecting planets. However, it will keep reinforcing if there's no AI command station there. So if you found a random world on the other side of the map with a lot of connected wormholes and blew up the command station and left, that might be a good way to keep it wasting reinforcements. Just make sure you don't need to use any of those worlds later...

[Hurmferd]

Phew!  I'm finishing up with neutering the second planet of 5 or so and this is taking some time.  As I neuter the guardposts, I'm also taking the time to whittle down the AI ship fleets on each of the planets from 1,100 to about 100, so that's adding to the time that its taking. 

In my next game, I'll know to neuter those adjoining planet right away, while they only have a few hundred AI ships and before they build up such a lethal force.

NEXT UP:  I'll be jumping through a wormhole to begin neutering that planet with the gravity drill.  This will be a difficult assignment since there are 300 or 400 MkIV AI ships camped at each wormhole entrance.  Based on your comments BobtheJanitor, once I get the first wormhole entrance cleared, the task should be quite a bit easier since the gravity drill will slow down the AI's movement and retaliation.

I'll keep in mind that idea to neuter (and place a small force on) a planet in a far corner of the map to distract the AI's reinforcements.  That might prove useful.  If I can find a non-strategic corner, that is...

Wish me luck!
H.

[Red Spot]

Neuter a random planet somewhere not attached to your terf, let the AI build up over there ...

Although you have to keep units there to keep its attention. So unless you're willing to leave a skeleton crew to keep the planet on alert, this may not do too much to help. It won't reinforce much if you just neuter it and then leave and have no connecting planets. However, it will keep reinforcing if there's no AI command station there. So if you found a random world on the other side of the map with a lot of connected wormholes and blew up the command station and left, that might be a good way to keep it wasting reinforcements. Just make sure you don't need to use any of those worlds later...

Just try it and see how much of the AIs reinforcements start pooring into your terf from that side of the universe.
It is a tactic I always use when playing an X-style map, neuter the center planet of the hub-planet that hasnt gotten a core/home-planet and let that part build up while I slowly get ready to assault the actual 2 targets near the other 2 hubplanets.
Works best if you do it some hops away and have scouts there as you can see where the threat will come from and gives you more than enough time to respond if needed.

Edit: Luck!