Re-Enable Golems and other stuff

[Jokus]

Hey,

new player here. I'm playing on a 6/6 game and it seems I'm not totally getting devastated this time. But there are still a few questions around:

1.) I have an activated Black Widow Golem, which is a nasty beast. I love it to "steal" enemy reinforcements with it and drag them into my waiting fleet on my side of the stargate. The tooltip says something about re-enabling the golem, so it gets speed 80. That would be so awesome for shaving off enemy forces from hostile systems. How do I do that? I have about 5 times the needed energy, so that won't be an issue.

2.) AI Eye and Spire Shield Sphere. In the same system. ARRRGH!!! I finally could get that one killed with my aforementioned golem. But it was only a T1 system. And what do I do with such a system, when there is no golem around? I suppose bomber starships would do the trick?

3.) AI Eye in an enemy home system. My only idea is to get an artillery golem and plaster the guard posts / eye with that one. I'm already fighting my way through enemy systems to get my greedy hands on one of them. Any better suggestions?

Thanks.

[TechSY730]

Hey,

new player here. I'm playing on a 6/6 game and it seems I'm not totally getting devastated this time. But there are still a few questions around:

1.) I have an activated Black Widow Golem, which is a nasty beast. I love it to "steal" enemy reinforcements with it and drag them into my waiting fleet on my side of the stargate. The tooltip says something about re-enabling the golem, so it gets speed 80. That would be so awesome for shaving off enemy forces from hostile systems. How do I do that? I have about 5 times the needed energy, so that won't be an issue.

2.) AI Eye and Spire Shield Sphere. In the same system. ARRRGH!!! I finally could get that one killed with my aforementioned golem. But it was only a T1 system. And what do I do with such a system, when there is no golem around? I suppose bomber starships would do the trick?

3.) AI Eye in an enemy home system. My only idea is to get an artillery golem and plaster the guard posts / eye with that one. I'm already fighting my way through enemy systems to get my greedy hands on one of them. Any better suggestions?

Thanks.

1. Probably an outdated tooltip. There are lots of them in this version. (Kieth has already apologized for not keeping up with them, so don't rag them too much about it) So sorry, no boosted speed for you. Is the activated golem displaying the tooltip for both the broken and the repaired versions? If so, that is a bug.

2. Yes, it is annoying, but thankfully rare. (Or it should be, if you are seeing it very frequently, then that might be a bug or something). To deal with situation, I generally bring in bomber starships, siege starships, any other starship with a huge base attack (if I have them), spirecraft implosion artillery (if I have them), any golems (if I have them), and as many bombers (or other units with a heavy hull type bonus, which spire shield guard posts have) as I can get without getting close to triggering the AI eye. It typically works pretty well, though it can take some time.
If you don't have enough of these to deal noticeable damage before having to retreat, then you aren't ready to take that planet yet. If you are having this issue, come back later when you have better stuff.

3. Basically, the best approach is what I described in number 2, except you need much higher Mk. units (at the very least Mk. III for the fleet ships) to stand a chance. If you don't have many high level units, you are not ready to tackle the home-world in any reasonable sort of way. Remember, the AI tends to prioritize defense of their home planets, just like you should be doing with your home planet.  

[BobTheJanitor]

If you've got a golem moving and attacking, it's already as activated as it's going to get. There may be some confusion here between the broken golem tooltip and the tooltip you get after it's activated.

The Eye and spire shield is an aggravating situation. Often it's easier to just attack the Eye rather than the spire shield and all the guard posts. This way you can surround it with your fleet and just kill the zombies as they spawn. For a more sneaky solution, the AI has to follow supply rules just like you do, so if you kill the command station on that planet and on all the adjacent AI planets, the spire shield will drop. But depending on how many wormholes come into that planet, that may not be a viable solution.

AI Eye in a home system, yeah that's no fun. You can take out an Eye with an artillery golem, but it takes a while and a lot of micro-management to do it. Those golems like to shoot the first thing they see when popping out of a wormhole, so it's easy for their shot to get wasted unless you send them through in low power mode, give them a target, then power them up, then have them run back out the wormhole as soon as they fire so they don't get chopped up. You'll probably end up with a pretty massive stalking force on the wormhole if you do this, especially on a homeworld. Lightning warheads might help with this, or martyrs if you have the LotS expansion on. Of course this would all hinge on you taking the world next door to the homeworld, which is going to be a core world and it's going to be pretty mean by itself.

Edit: I was ninja'd but I already did all this typing, so... POST