Returning to AI war, having a problem securing some planets

[Winter Born]

Ok, I have attached the save.  Planet Roseso is usually the one attacked.   In a little while from this save, Planet Pihluuo will have this mysterious attack, the announced one.  I was attacking planet Fohjer when the attack game against Pihluuo.  I do not know if that had anything to do with it.  The typical attacks against Roseso are not announced.

Fohjer has a counterattack guard post at the 5 o'clock position from Sorita WH
on the planetary summary in galaxy view they show up as " Post[Counter  ] x1   and the icon looks a little like a scruffy PacMan with open mouth facing right   (attacking the counter guard post or the com station on that planet will trigger a wave with 60 sec notice iirc)

Tusji in the center of the galaxy map has a Mk2 counter attack guard post as well


Roseso has 2 hostile planets next to it -- Look at Sorita and note how the AI ships are gathering at the Roseso WH
I ran your game with out doing anything and watched the WH area @ 6:16 enough ships had gathered that about 60 decided to jump through and attack Roseso from Sorita w/o warning (border aggression)


Hope that helps

[TheSilverHammer]

I thought border aggression needed a few 1000 ships to do that.  And the announced attack into the sector that was 3 hops from a red planet was caused by attacking a guard post?

Then a lot has changed since I played.  To bad the tutorial doesn't cover any of this.  Are there any rules for cross planet attacks that have changed?   It used to be, that they would only attack sectors where there were warp gates.   Now it seems they will attack planets bordering even neutered planets.

[Winter Born]

I thought border aggression needed a few 1000 ships to do that.  And the announced attack into the sector that was 3 hops from a red planet was caused by attacking a guard post?

Then a lot has changed since I played.  To bad the tutorial doesn't cover any of this.  Are there any rules for cross planet attacks that have changed?   It used to be, that they would only attack sectors where there were warp gates.   Now it seems they will attack planets bordering even neutered planets.

Yes lots has changed with 4.0

border aggression:
you are playing with normal ship caps that are actually half as many as the old 3.0 , but 2x as powerful. (High ship caps = old 3.0 in most cases -- MK1 fighters 198 or so for example)
so things like border aggression, wave size, etc are scaled with ship caps. If you play on low ship cap you get 1/4th the ships that are 4x stronger.(better for machines with low graphics performance)

Counter Wave Guard posts are new with 4.0    Destroying them or their com station triggers a counter attack with about 60 sec warning that appears in the lower right corner of any system you hold that does not have a "Warp Jammer" Com station

CPA cross planet attack idk for sure, here is a link to a discussion by X4000

http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,3801.msg25096.html#msg25096

[Malibu Stacey]

I thought border aggression needed a few 1000 ships to do that.  And the announced attack into the sector that was 3 hops from a red planet was caused by attacking a guard post?

Then a lot has changed since I played.  To bad the tutorial doesn't cover any of this.  Are there any rules for cross planet attacks that have changed?   It used to be, that they would only attack sectors where there were warp gates.   Now it seems they will attack planets bordering even neutered planets.

Border Aggression & Cross Planet Attacks aren't the same thing.

First you need to understand that there's 3 "modes" for AI ships to be in. Guarding, Special Forces or "Free".
Guarding ships sit in a system & wait for you to attack. Once you attack they switch to "Free". If you retreat out of the system they can & will counter-attack (which can be used to your advantage).
Special Forces travel between Special Forces Guard Posts. If that puts them into one of your systems or you attack the system they are in they will switch to "Free".

Border Agression is the AI's releasing a build up of ships in a system to attack you by basically taking some ships that were on Guard duty & freeing them. It's mainly to stop you being complacent about defending your systems once you've gate raided and/or neutered a system. You can see how many "Free" ships there are at any time in the summary. Any "Free" ships on AI planets are shown under 'Threat', any on your planets are shown under 'Attack'. These ships can be of any level depending on the system they were freed from hence having a mark III or IV system bordering your core worlds & freeing ships periodically is likely not going to end well if you don't have adequate defences.

Cross Planet Attacks (CPAs) are announced like waves & you usually have between 5 & 15 minutes depending on the difficulty before they start. When a CPA is announced the AI's pick a number of ships from all of its planets & changes them from Guard to "Free". The AI's will only pick the same level of ships as the current waves would send (numeral in brackets under the AI Progress on the summary). These ships will group up to attack you & the AI's aren't dumb about where to attack, they will go for your most weakly defended systems where possible. It's not uncommon to have a few systems each being attacked by a few hundred ships simultaneously depending on how many ingress points the AI has to your systems.

All of this stuff is covered in the Wiki & the only change to any of the above between v3 & v4 is the lowering of the border agression cap to discourage blobbing by both players & the AI's.


This game isn't designed to be easy or a walkover. Expect to lose every game you start & when you win, analyze how you did it, turn up the AI difficulty on a new map & try again until you don't.