New Player & Request for help with Fog of War Game

[Hurmferd]

Hello all,

I'm a new player, first time poster, and I'm enjoying AIW tremendously!  Kudos to X and the dev team for a finely crafted experience!  I've found that this is one of those rare games that grabs one's attention, one's daydreaming while awake, and even one's dreams while sleeping.  

I've searched the site and wiki and haven't seen many comments about games using Fog of War rules, so I thought that I'd ask the experienced community for advice.  

MY GAME SITUATION
- Fog of War game at level 7/7 with 80 planets
- I've taken over the three planets that are directly adjacent to my homeworld
- I've taken over a fourth additional planet that contained an Advanced Research Station and also an MK1 Ion Cannon (all of which I now own)
- The AIP now = 119
- I've unlocked MK3 fighters and MK2 scouts, the Econ Mk2 station, and a number of turret improvements, but have made no other upgrades to ships.  
- The AI has retaliated with an average of about 600 ships so far, although I've just received a notice that 1,200 ships have been freed and will begin a cross-planet raid (YIKES!)
- I've set up turret/mine defenses at all of my planets and the defenses are, so far, fairly effective at squashing any AI waves that come my way.
- I've divided most of my fleet amongst the three front-line planets, and have left my home planet with a small number of ships.
- I'm still scouting, scouting, scouting, but have seen no sign of a the AI homes yet.

MY OPTIONS FOR YOUR FEEDBACK
1) I've found a planet that is loaded with stuff!  It contains an ARS, a broken hive golem (medium difficulty setting), a fabricator, a Mk2 Ion Cannon and also a Dyson Sphere.  Unfortunately, this will be a tough nut to crack and to get to this nut, I'll need to go through an MK4 planet with an AI Eye...  It might be biting off a lot more than I can chew right now.
2) Or, I'm thinking about embarking on a gate-raiding frenzy since the waves are hitting me pretty regularly.  Unfortunately, there are about 8 adjacent planets with Warp Gates which will amount to another 40 points of AI Progress, which will increase the size of waves and cross-planet raids.
3) Or should I take over a few other planets to improve my technology and resources, possibly striking out along a chain of mineral-rich planets that I've found that extend out from one of my front-line planets towards the opposite side of map, with the hope of finding an AI world.
 
Any suggestions as to how to best proceed?  Any particular order that you'd go after these objectives?  Any other techs that you'd go after that might help with this Fog of War game?

Thank you,
H.

[Red Spot]

At first I would simply keep scouting 2 hops out, always know what you might possibly trigger by attacking the next planet (raid-engines get triggered when you attack neigbouring planets/alarms can be a menace at gamestart), deep-scouting is something for when you get a mk4 fab and enough knowledge to unlock mk3 scouts. The mk2 scouts are a good choice, ignore the mk1s for scouting, use the mk2s and use the mk1s as info-beacons on planets you have cleared of tachion posts.
Expand in such way you quickly develop an economy (6-12 planets), but dont neglect alerted 'tough nuts' as they only get harder to crack over time.
Destroy as many gates as you can, I would only not do so if it would cause the next mark level for the waves which I want to hold of, for the rest, only 1 gate adjacent to my planets.
Dont go for the Dyson planet untill you can keep in it supply and have a mk2 fleet/know what you're doing. I am not sure if you realise this, but you cant keep the planet and will need to abandon it as soon as you conquer it .. sooner than that.
Golems are basicly just trofee's untill you really know how to use them, dont put too much value in them, specially not with the AIP/energy-cost they have on medium (eg: the hive golem will suck you dry of resources if you think of using it without a really strong economy, by that time its real value comes from its special purpose abilities. For instance when you get hit by a wave by surprise, a full hive-golem can be quite handy, but wasted if you have a fleet standing by.)

[Panopticon]

Something that can help with a poorly connected, high Mark planet is knocking them out of supply. The AI functions under the same supply rules you do, and can be significantly easier to deal with when out of supply. You won't want to go for the Command Station right off the bat if there are a lot of ships at the planet though. Gate raid, pull them into an adjacent worlds defenses a bit at a time and whittle the force down, if you don't then you'll probably just trigger a big incursion into your own territory.

This is a tricky one to pull off most of the time though, don't go out of your way trying this out. It's just something to keep an eye out for as you play the game. It's an opportunity that can be easy to miss.

[Hurmferd]

Thank you for the quick replies, Red Spot and Panopticon!

Based upon your comments, in the short term I'll focus on the following:
- Continue scouting, scouting, scouting.
- Perform gate raids on all adjacent planets, leaving only one adjacent warp gate from which I'll expect the waves of attacks that'll promptly get crushed by my waiting, strong defense.  Phew!  Taking all of those warp gates, some of which are behind FF's and have protecting units, will take a while.
- Expand my planets and economy, seeking to take strategic or mineral-rich targets and perhaps to strangle the supply lines of that TREASURE planet.

When my economy is humming, and when I've finished laying waste to all of those warp gates, I hope that I'll be coming back to report on excellent progress!

Also RS, thanks for the pointing out that I won't be able to hold the Dyson Sphere planet.  I had missed that point when reading through all of the wiki/manual/website info.

H.

[hullu]

Taking all of those warp gates, some of which are behind FF's and have protecting units, will take a while.

Raid starships oneshot(or something close to oneshot) them through forcefields.

[Red Spot]

½ a cap of mk1 bomber delivered by a transport, or simply ½ a cap of mk1 fighter without transport. Early game I find that that is enough for gateraiding, a cap of mk2 fighter clears entire mk1-2 planets on difficulty 8, early game.

Raidships cost too much when you still are working with only 3-4-5 planets, imo. But in the case of the gate being under an FF they may still be worth the resources, you could also choose to leave one of those gates .. In any way, deliver your 'commandos' using transports.


Hurmferd, I dont know how much gametime you have under the belt, but you may simply want to 'mess around' in a game set up for your own skills. Possibly lose it, but get a lot better understanding of the game doing so. My first real game was vs 2 lvl7 AIs where I just quit 5 hours in to start a new game on lvl7.6, not taking certain AIs and enabling very specific minor factions.
You for instance might have been in quite some pain if you where targeting the Dyson planet, not realising you have to give it up. When you're goofing around you probably wont care, but in a serious game it hurts when you lose your Home-CC x hours in.

[Hurmferd]

Thanks Hulu, for the Raid Starship info.  That helped!  I successfully took out the Warp Gate on a planet that was constantly sending waves after me.  I already had built the starships, so I simply loaded them--plus a few ships for protection--onto the transport.  One down, 7 or so to go...  And if those waves ease up a bit, I'll take a bit of time to study the map and decide on which planet might be the best one to leave a Warp Gate on.

Red Spot, this is my first game (aside from the tutorials), and I definitely consider it my "mess-around" game.  I fully expect that I'll get hammered by the AI at some point, and that it'll be a learning experience, but my next game will go all that much better.  You folks have given me some good tips and I'm adjusting my play, so I'm hoping that I'll at least put up a fair showing.  I'm having fun while learning and I suspect that I'll laugh when the AI hammer drops, knowing that it's coming.

As I go along, I've been taking notes and getting acquainted with the reference materials.  There's certainly a LOT of information to digest.

I hope that you guys will be OK if I continue asking questions as I work my way through this first game, though.  

Thanks again,
H.

[Panopticon]

Ask away, that's why these boards are here. 

[Hurmferd]

I've made a bit of progress in my game and have another question as to how you experts might proceed.

GAME STATUS:
- I now control 5 planets in my 80-planet game with difficulty 7/7
- AIP = 139
- I'm getting hit with waves of about 1,300 ships, forcing me to shift my forces around to avoid major losses
- I've now begun gate-raiding the majority of adjacent planets, so I expect to soon have less of a need to shift forces so much;  I have another 6 to destroy and I'll leave one warp gate alive so that I'll know where the future waves will be coming from
- I've been strongly focusing on scouting the nearby area, and have found a fair number attractive targets:  1) all four AI co-processors, 2) three data centers, 3) two ARS's, 4) three fabricators.  
- Unfortunately, I've also found two raid engines.

MY QUESTION: In which order would you do you tackle the following items (feel free to add an item):
a. Get the warp gate situation under control
b. Take out the data centers with raids
c. Take those ARS's and fabricators ASAP!
d. Shift forces and take over a planet or two to position myself to take out the raid engines.  I guess that I should take these using a 2-hop strike?
e. Shift forces and take over a planet or two to position myself to take all four co-processors simultaneously, if at all possible

I'm leaning towards first focusing on a., then tackle b. and c. together, performing d. whenever the raid engines are in my way, and perform e. last.

Thanks!
H.

P.S.  I'm staying away from the Dyson Sphere for now.  I'll need to eventually take that system to get the ARS, though, and then let the Dyson Sphere take the planet back.

[BobTheJanitor]

I'm not sure of a general strategy, but I will say from an AIP standpoint that it can help to remember that every 200 AIP the AI gets a new ship type to play with. You can revert AIP gains by destroying data centers and co-processors but any new ships they unlock, they get to keep. So if you can find a way to do your AIP reduction work before it breaks 200 that can help you out a bit. That said, starting from 139 you might not be able to do that. It depends on where all the AIP reducers are and if you can kill the data centers first and give you the buffer you'd need to take the +80 AIP hit from destroying the co-processors before you get the -120 when they all die. Wiping out any more warp gates will of course slim down your margin even more. On the other hand, the AI may unlock a ship that's not too hard to defend against, so it may not be worth worrying about.

Also, 1,300 waves? What AI types are you up against?  That sounds pretty huge for 139 AIP. Or are you playing on high caps?

[chemical_art]

1300 ships at 7.0 with 139 AIP? Messy. I get  waves of 2200 at 170ish...but those are younglings, and at 8.0.

I haven't yet read everything, but I would try to reduce your number of fronts if you are worried about shifting your forces too much. Gate raiding is nice, but if you are not ultimately making your defense easier, you are only making things harder for yourself through AIP.

[Hurmferd]

@BtJ:  Yes, my Unit Cap Scale = High.  That's bad, eh?  Darn it!

From both of your comments, I guess that regardless of what I do, it's a tradeoff.  If I raid the gates to reduce damages, that increases AIP and the potential for introducing a more destructive ship from the AI at AIP = 200.  And if I hit the data centers (which won't be easy...) to reduce AIP, then I'll have to keep an eye on my backside for waves and waves of invaders.

Hmm.  Maybe I'll take the compromise position.  I'll take out the Warp Gates on one side to somewhat reduce the need to shift ships, and then go after the closest data center or 2.

I'm also eyeing up a 4metal/4crystal planet for resources (although it'll add 20 AIP...) and the add'l knowledge to boost my ship tech.

Thanks again, for your insight!  I'll do my best to stay away from AIP = 200!
H.

[Panopticon]

I think you are sweating 200 AIP too hard. That's really not all that much, I usually hit it before I get solidly into the mid-game.

Don't trip out too much on high numbers in Waves. Some spider turrets, some missile turrets mixed in with a few other defenses that seem appropriate for the types of forces you are facing will work as a force multiplier for you. Three tractor turrets at the wormhole will slow down a lot of ships too. Warp Detectors, which are super cheap, will give you a better heads up on what's coming your way and they also show which wormhole(s) they'll come at you from. This can allow you to preposition appropriate fleetships at optimal ranges. There are all kinds of ways to take the wind out of an invading force, use that home field advantage.

[BobTheJanitor]

@BtJ:  Yes, my Unit Cap Scale = High.  That's bad, eh?  Darn it!

It's not really 'bad' but it does have the potential to make your CPU commit hara-kiri once you get to some really big fleet battles in the end game. Other than lots more ships everywhere, the balance and difficulty should be essentially the same.

[Hurmferd]

Hello all,

I'm making progress!  And for those of you who've been kind enough to provide suggestions, here's a screenshot of my current situation, all of my home planets marked with a blue star.  My home planet is Lakaeishu (highlighted on the map with the selected white circle) and it's fairly well protected because I own the three planets that are adjacent to it.



I successfully gate-raided all AI planets that are adjacent to the left planet in my galaxy (Asdesva) and that helped tremedously in reducing the shifting around of my ships.  It also upped my AIP by 10, so then I set about reducing that number...

...by first taking out two Data Centers using a two-hop raid followed by a three-hop raid.  These took a while to perform since they stirred up a lot of counterattacks, but were worth it since I now had enough room under the AIP = 200 threshold to take out the 4 co-processors.  

I then spent a fair amount of time taking out the co-processors, which took hours in realtime as I again struggled with waves and CPA's.  But you can see the result at the top of the screenshot:  AIP = 53!!!  I now have a lot of room to add a few planets (that hold ARS's and Fabricators) and do the requisite gate-raiding to constrain the waves to one entry point.

Thanks for all of your advice!  Without it, I'd surely have met with a different outcome.

One other task that I performed:  I turned the Dyson Sphere (on the planet Oksik, pointed to by a red arrow on the above screenshot) into my friend by killing all AI guard posts and the AI command post on that planet.  Now the Dyson Sphere is happily sending allies to say hello to all adjacent AI planets in it's area.  A screenshot is below.  I wish that I could land a colony ship and take over that planet without making an enemy of Dyson, since that planet has an ARS, a Fabricator, and a Golem, but I'd rather have the Dyson Sphere causing problems with the AI for now.



If you look at the upper left of the screenshots, you'll see that I now have about a dozen hours into this game.  By the time that I find the AI Home Planet (if I get that far), this'll probably be a 40 hour game.

H.