New player AAR

[Platypusp]

This is my third game and up until an hour ago I thought I had a good chance of beating it this time. I'm on an 80 planet map, against two randomly selected vanilla AI's at diff 7, all 4 expansions, golems, dyson sphere, hero unit and spirecraft turned on. I tried to select all those options that seemed likely to add interest, while leaving me fighting the AI rather than dealing with swarms of marauders or other randomised factors.

I now seem to be having the same problem that lots of newbs run into - driving AI too high and then not being able to deal with it.

After game two I read quite a bit on the forums about keeping AIP low and opted to leave as many enemy planets as possible, having killed guard posts and warp gate but not command station to neuter them. I figured that this would avoid the 15 AIP for each CMD, spread out enemy reinforcements and finally leave me opportunities to leech/zombie farm on a regular basis. I am now on 696 AIP, having destroyed all 4 processors, hacked superterminal for -200ish, activated all 10 golems on the map and taken  50 of 80 planets, leaving the 2 AI's on 20, I have milked all the knowledge possible so I've got the majority of the techs except a few of the economic ones and a couple of high level turrets. I can't figure out how to take a screenshot but the situation is now that that I have colonized the worlds which I seemed the most obvious chokepoints to defend at before serving as the beachead for the assualt into the enemy core worlds. I now understand that in doing so I have alerted one core world for each AI, in one case leaving me with a heavily defended chokepoint with 6 fortresses (modular, mini and standard), 100+ turrets, a fleet of around 600 ships and a nearby group of my shadow ship and 4 golems available for backup. Unfortunatly I now have a mass carrier force of 10k ships (mostly mkV) amassing which will presumably attack at some point soon. I have tried forestalling this by various methods (since back when their numbers where as low as 2000) by can't seem to hurt the carriers in any significant way and also can't let them through to my world a few at a time as they're able to pass through FF's.
Am I screwed?

Questions -
1) What I don't get about keeping AIP low by taking as few planets as possible is that the enemy ships that build up even on a neutered world if nothing else significantly slow and harrass movement and mean that I only end up leaving neutered rather than destroyed/captured the 6 or so non-core enemy worlds that 1) don't have anything important like a golem or ARS and 2) aren't directly on the way to somewhere that does. This means taking far more than the 20-30 planets that experienced players seem to suggest.

Do I need to be prepared to use transports to get through these worlds every time?
Have I been Golem/ARS/fabricator greedy? (I have taken 10 golems, 4 ARS and 6 Fabs)
Is keeping the AIP low really worth the sacrifice of all that knowledge, economic gain and territiorial contiguity from taking planets that are on the way to the ultimate goal?

2) I thought that leaving neutered backwater worlds would allow the opportunity to "farm" lower level enemy ships using specialist fleets composed of all 12 of my leech starships, 100+ merc parasites, my shadow ship with l3 leech cannons and botnet golem - plus a little back up to take out non reclaimables. Unfortunatly this seems to be working poorly, even when using such a fleet to attack a neutered world with 400 mostly mk2s I end up grabbing at most about 10 or 20 enemy ships and a few more zombies, the rest simply being destroyed in an engagement that turns into a grind, presumably due to the leech/parasites having a low base attack compared to ships built to simply kill the enemy.

Am I missing something? It seems like this should be a sensible way to bolster my fleet, allow my 6 spire civillians to reduce AIP while I'm not increasing it and leave at least a few worlds neutered rather than destroyed.

3) Why has the carrier armada mounted up so suddenly? I had been content to let what seemed a stable situation  continue all the time the ships massed on these planets remained around 2000 total but in response to something (presumably something I did) they suddenly began deploying from strategic reserve, and now have upwards of 10k which I suspect  will overwhelm my forces. I took these chokepoint planets some time ago on what I now suspect may have been a misunderstanding of AI Wars mechanics, assuming that breaking (and some time later occupying) the territorial connection which linked enemy core with peripheral territory would benefit me.

4) Is there any way for me to retrieve this now? Or should I see if I have an earlier, but not too much earlier save? I have tried various means of dealing with this mounting carrier armada - so far:
a) Trying to whittle away this imposing force by sending through spire martyrs. This dosn't seem to harm carriers at all meaning at best I kill the 500 or so free ships with one, since the asteroids are a finite resource this is unviable.

b) Sending all my golems plus shadow ship through to destroy carriers on their side. I can't kill the carriers fast enough, they send many through to my world and I end up with a split fleet facing, in total just as overwhelming odds. Is there a way to bait only a few at a time to chase me back to my heavily defended world?

c) The same plus spire shields and penetrators, to take out orb mass drivers, warhead interceptors etc. This enabled me to kill quite a bit but will deplete non renewable resources too fast.

d) Warheads. While they don't burn through the available asteroids they don't hurt carriers (apart from turrets and standard ship weapons does anything?) and also drive up AIP.

Is the strategic reserve I notice being deployed renewable or, having already seen the first 30% could I hope to kill the lot?

I have yet to set up my first spire city, having held off setting up this apparently powerful defense that seems likely to provoke a seperate but equally drastic threat until I thought I had a secure position at these 2 chokepoint worlds. Should I go for broke, establish spire cities and hope I can hold off the response until I can take full advantage of whatever the spire cities provide? Or did I leave spire cities too late?

I suspect that this has gone too far and I can neither srangle the monster in its cradle nor deal with it on my turf.


All in all this is a fantastic game and I'm enjoying being beaten.

Platypus

[keith.lamothe]

Welcome to the game and to the forums!   Glad to hear you're enjoying it.  Particularly enjoying being beaten  

The idea is for it to provide a stiff challenge at whatever level of play someone's at.  Some people prefer a challenge such that they just barely win, others prefer a challenge such that they just barely lose; either way you should be able to find it here.  Others just like to romp over it without much chance of loss but that doesn't require much careful balancing on our part.

golems, dyson sphere, hero unit and spirecraft turned on. I tried to select all those options that seemed likely to add interest, while leaving me fighting the AI rather than dealing with swarms of marauders or other randomised factors.

Yea, that will still have the AI as the opponent.  Is that golems-hard and spirecraft-hard, or what?  Both on hard would be quite painful if you're not very used to the game.

After game two I read quite a bit on the forums about keeping AIP low and opted to leave as many enemy planets as possible, having killed guard posts and warp gate but not command station to neuter them. I figured that this would avoid the 15 AIP for each CMD, spread out enemy reinforcements and finally leave me opportunities to leech/zombie farm on a regular basis.

Yes, that's a smart play as long as you don't wind up spending too much time on the neutering (either running up the clock too high, or just getting bored).

I am now on 696 AIP

Whooooa, that's not "keeping AIP low"   300 to 400 is fine on 7/7 (in my personal recent experience, at least) but pushing 700 is.. well, pushing it.

taken  50 of 80 planets

Good grief.  It is possible to win 7/7 by taking all/most of the planets, but it's definitely not the intended path.  That's very likely to overwhelm you with AI response.  20 planets out of 80 is probably a good maximum, though you could get away with a bit more than that depending on the situation.

I can't figure out how to take a screenshot

Either printscreen to get your whole screen for the clipboard, or F12 to dump a shot of just the game to the RuntimeData/Screenshots/ directory in your AIW directory.

I now understand that in doing so I have alerted one core world for each AI

Previously combined with that AIP this would just be incredibly painful.  It's still nasty but at least the AI's reinforcements stop getting more voluminous around AIP 250 or so on 7/7.

Unfortunatly I now have a mass carrier force of 10k ships (mostly mkV) amassing which will presumably attack at some point soon. I have tried forestalling this by various methods (since back when their numbers where as low as 2000) by can't seem to hurt the carriers in any significant way and also can't let them through to my world a few at a time as they're able to pass through FF's.
Am I screwed?

I'll let some of the community players chime in on this and the rest of your questions (they play through situations more often than I do) but the carriers can simply be nuked if it really comes down to it.  But there are less drastic solutions, too.

[Aklyon]

First off, what AIP is this at?
If there is too many ships out already and you blow up a carrier, the carrier merges its holds into less (but approximately equally strong in strength count) ships. This could shrink your carrier armada, but it could also end up throwing a core guardian fleet at you instead of a massive wave of fleetship if it has to compress too far.

Spire Cities, if you put them in the right spot, can act as some pretty massive defense. Also making sure you've built all the turrets you can at the chokepoints helps, along with mines and area mines. Someone with some more experience could probably tell you more. Keith is going to ninja me on my last sentence 

[keith.lamothe]

First off, what AIP is this at?

Too high

Spire Cities

No FS in this game.  Those are very important when present, though.

[Cinth]

Do not take 50 planets.  Just don't.  Even on 7/7 you aren't going to like how the AI responds at that point.  25-30 would be pushing the boundaries, IMO.

[Aklyon]

Spire Cities

No FS in this game.  Those are very important when present, though.

Seemed like it was by the way he said 'yet to setup the first city', though.

[keith.lamothe]

Spire Cities

No FS in this game.  Those are very important when present, though.

Seemed like it was by the way he said 'yet to setup the first city', though.

Oh, oops, you're right

[Platypusp]

All activated extras are on easy and 3/4 max with the exception of botnet golem  which for some reason I put on medium.

Thanks to someones response yesterday see the attached screenshot for some reason the foru won't let me make 2 attachments so will follow this with a save file.

Since I seem to have taken this quite far in terms of AIP etc I'm interested to see what people think.

[Platypusp]

And here's my most recent save. I'm in the middle of redeploying my fleet so ships are all over the place.

[Kahuna]

*clicks the screenshot* .. *looks at AIP* Yep. Start a new game

Am I screwed?

Yes.

Questions -
1) What I don't get about keeping AIP low by taking as few planets as possible is that the enemy ships that build up even on a neutered world if nothing else significantly slow and harrass movement and mean that I only end up leaving neutered rather than destroyed/captured the 6 or so non-core enemy worlds that 1) don't have anything important like a golem or ARS and 2) aren't directly on the way to somewhere that does. This means taking far more than the 20-30 planets that experienced players seem to suggest.

Do I need to be prepared to use transports to get through these worlds every time?
Have I been Golem/ARS/fabricator greedy? (I have taken 10 golems, 4 ARS and 6 Fabs)
Is keeping the AIP low really worth the sacrifice of all that knowledge, economic gain and territiorial contiguity from taking planets that are on the way to the ultimate goal?

I play 10/10 exclusively and I always capture max 6 or 7 planets. On that difficulty AIP > 120 = doom. Well.. of course it depends on available super weapons, tech unlocks, plan, galaxy map seed and stuff. On 7/7 difficulty.. I'd say try to keep AIP under ~300. Make that your goal. When you manage to do that try to keep it under 200. Do that and you will learn how to keep AIP low. It takes some time. Only capture planets you know you can defend, you need and are useful to you. Now sure it might be hard to know which planets are useful and worth capturing especially if you're new to the game. For me the best way to learn was to JUST PLAY and get my as* whooped by the AIs.

Yes you should use transports. Transports are fast, durable and cheap. I use Transports even if I'm just moving between my own planets because they're so fast.
Judging by the fact that your AIP is so high and you're struggling in this save file.. yes you have been too greedy.
Yes it's worth it. In my 10/10 games which I won I KEPT like 6 (5+home world). In addition to that I destroyed the Core Shield Generators and captured Golems and stuff. So in total.. I'd say I captured less than 15 planets.

2) I thought that leaving neutered backwater worlds would allow the opportunity to "farm" lower level enemy ships using specialist fleets composed of all 12 of my leech starships, 100+ merc parasites, my shadow ship with l3 leech cannons and botnet golem - plus a little back up to take out non reclaimables. Unfortunatly this seems to be working poorly, even when using such a fleet to attack a neutered world with 400 mostly mk2s I end up grabbing at most about 10 or 20 enemy ships and a few more zombies, the rest simply being destroyed in an engagement that turns into a grind, presumably due to the leech/parasites having a low base attack compared to ships built to simply kill the enemy.

Am I missing something? It seems like this should be a sensible way to bolster my fleet, allow my 6 spire civillians to reduce AIP while I'm not increasing it and leave at least a few worlds neutered rather than destroyed.

Parasites and Leech Starships alone are garbage. Combine them with other ships and they're awesome.

3) Why has the carrier armada mounted up so suddenly? I had been content to let what seemed a stable situation  continue all the time the ships massed on these planets remained around 2000 total but in response to something (presumably something I did) they suddenly began deploying from strategic reserve, and now have upwards of 10k which I suspect  will overwhelm my forces. I took these chokepoint planets some time ago on what I now suspect may have been a misunderstanding of AI Wars mechanics, assuming that breaking (and some time later occupying) the territorial connection which linked enemy core with peripheral territory would benefit me.

To me this sounds like a CPA (Cross Planetary Attack). CPAs happen every couple of hours and they're announced like other waves so you should have seen the warning but I don't know if you paid attention. CPAs always have thousands of ships.
The AIs will start deploying their Strategic Reserves if the player has military ships on any of the AI Core planets or a Super Terminal planet.. though I'm not 100% sure about the Super Terminal.. some times entering a Super Terminal planet with military ships makes the AI deploy it's Reserves and some times it doesn't.

4) Is there any way for me to retrieve this now?

No. Start a new game.

d) Warheads. While they don't burn through the available asteroids they don't hurt carriers

Enable Carrier Auto Targeting from the In-Game Controls. Bottom left corner of the screen. The "CTRLS" button.

Is the strategic reserve I notice being deployed renewable or, having already seen the first 30% could I hope to kill the lot?

Just like Special Forces Strategic Reserves do refill over time. They refill quite fast actually.

I have yet to set up my first spire city, having held off setting up this apparently powerful defense that seems likely to provoke a seperate but equally drastic threat until I thought I had a secure position at these 2 chokepoint worlds. Should I go for broke, establish spire cities and hope I can hold off the response until I can take full advantage of whatever the spire cities provide? Or did I leave spire cities too late?

I know nothing about the Fallen Spire. I always play the "normal" campaign because I find it more enjoyable.

[Platypusp]

"Parasites and Leech Starships alone are garbage. Combine them with other ships and they're awesome."

I don't get this since the in game descriptions say that ships which die with more than half their max health inflicted as reclamation damage will be reclaimed. To me this suggested that mixing parasites/leeches with other ships would make them less rather than more effective since enemy ships which took anything under 50% total damage from reclamation would not be reclaimed and that therefore concentrating and specialising my reclamation force in these backwater worlds would maximise my chances of reclaiming as many ships as possible.

Incidentally, screwed or not I'm persisting (unto death) with my by now epic 56 hour campaign and have now actually founded my first spire city (having wrongly claimed to have done so in the previously attached save file), and have successfully destroyed the majority of the carrier armada along with the majority of guard posts in the most threatening core world, by repeated golem raids, spire martyrs and warheads.

I realised that one thing set up at the beginning of the game which probably favours me significantly was putting my economy on +150ish % and the AI on -150ish %, although other sources would seem to suggest that economics matters very little to the AI since it effectively has a huge resource pool to draw on. I also chose 1/2 size enemy waves.

[Mánagarmr]

Nerfing the handicap on the AI essentially stumps its ability to reinforce its planets. The AI doesn't work under the same constraints as you do, and thus it has a completely different economic model to work under. So you lowering its handicap definitely hurts it.

[keith.lamothe]

I don't get this since the in game descriptions say that ships which die with more than half their max health inflicted as reclamation damage will be reclaimed. To me this suggested that mixing parasites/leeches with other ships would make them less rather than more effective since enemy ships which took anything under 50% total damage from reclamation would not be reclaimed and that therefore concentrating and specialising my reclamation force in these backwater worlds would maximise my chances of reclaiming as many ships as possible.

Well first, one thing to bear in mind is that normal opinions come in mild, medium, and strong, but Kahuna opinions often only have one setting   Very worth listening to, just factor that in.

But the basic point on this is valid: the total dps and hp you can get out of your all-reclamator force is generally not enough to win a serious battle.

Another rule (relatively recent addition, not in the descriptions, though I'll fix that for next release) that really impacts this is:

If a ship dies with some reclamation damage but not enough to reclaim it, those "reclamation nanites" will "hop" to a nearby eligible target if one is available.

So if only 10% of your force's total dps is from reclaiming sources you're still going to probably not reclaim as many as you would with a 100%-reclamator force, but you're going to reclaim a lot more ships than you probably think, and most of them will be reclaimed at the end (due to the nanite's "rolling up" on to the last ships to go down due to the hopping mechanic) when they're less likely to be killed by their former allies.

I realised that one thing set up at the beginning of the game which probably favours me significantly was putting my economy on +150ish % and the AI on -150ish %, although other sources would seem to suggest that economics matters very little to the AI since it effectively has a huge resource pool to draw on.

Its economy is fundamentally different from yours.  Until maybe a year ago it was roughly fair to say that it did not have an economy.  But even back then (and still the case now), a -150% handicap will nail the AI in terms of what it actually gets to throw at you and defend itself with.

That one setting is probably what explains why a relatively new player could still be alive at nearly 700 AIP on diff 7

I also chose 1/2 size enemy waves.

You mean "1/2 Waves" under AI Modifiers in the lobby?  That's not actually a size modifier, it's a frequency modifier.  But it still helps.

[Platypusp]

OK. Thanks - that clears up much of my confusion. Up to now the firepower backup I included with the reclamation force was limited to a couple of flagship fleet starships (with the idea that they would boost the reclaimers firepower without adding too much in the way of non reclamation weaponry), will try adding a few heavy firepower non reclaimers. Since I opted to use the reclamation fleet to farm neutered and isolated worlds they haven't been in any major engagements anyway.

On the economic front I imagined that choosing such unbalanced handicaps with a high AI difficulty (for a beginner) would give an intelligent but impoverished AI, meaning that I would face sophisticated enemy behaviours which I would be able to learn to deal with without being overwhelmed by pure numbers. Perhaps this also goes some way to explaining why the incoming CPA is apparently only 1500 ships.

And yes I mean 1/2 waves. Frequency not quantity.

Have I discovered a slightly different way to play? This is feels like a huge and gruelling challenge but despite the comments of others (and excluding the as yet unforseen surprises that may await as I attack homeworlds) it feels like I'm slowly winning.

[Mánagarmr]

Nah, it's just not common to play that way around here. The ones that post their AARs around here are either computer-destroying, 16 homeworld megaslaughterfests or 10/10 doomgames, with sprinkles of "mortals" posting their 7/7 games
 
But giving yourself a big handicap, and also nerfing the AI naturally makes the game winnable, even at high AIP. I'd say 600 AIP isn't a big issue in 7/7 with those handicaps. Sure, it's a slugfest, but I think it's winnable if you manage your AIP good up ahead, finding Datacenters, abuse the SuperTerminal etc.