What Causes AI Progress Changes?

[x4000]

Thought this new wiki topic might be of interest to many people: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_AI_Progress#What_Causes_AI_Progress_Changes.3F

[HellishFiend]

Cool! It's nice to see all that info in one place.

[x4000]

Yeah, people had asked about that but I just had never made a compilation before.  Now I've made it so that I can easily export the list from the game to keep the wiki up to date in the future, which is handy for avoiding oversights.

[Spikey00]

I imagine it would be helpful for reference--appreciable, Chris!

[Harry]

Thanks so much for doing this!  As the poster who asked the original question, I'm especially grateful!  I've posted a more detailed reply in my "MAR" thread in the AAR forum.

[x4000]

My pleasure!

[V22 Osprey]

Should've read this first.I went in for my second planet, but like I noob I destroyed the AI's Orbital Command Station first, causing the AI progress to sky rocket.Now my main fleet is having to deal heavy AI reinforcements, and now larger raids are moving in fast on my home planet.My main fleet 2 jumps away from home, and I don't have the economy to build a decent defense.I'm doomed.

[Lancefighter]

o.0 skyrocket? you mean like go up from 10ish to 20 or 30ish?

hardly.. the issue is more, with the command station dead, the units are free to roam around and attack stuff.

recommendation - tech up missile or lightning turrets, and build them around your home station. With forcefields and turrets, you should be able to take down the (dangerous to forcefields) bombers. Nothing else can really harm a forcefield enough for it to really matter at early game settings.

oh, and recall the fleet asap. Cant hurt to have reinforcements show up.

[V22 Osprey]

Well I was already at 38 AI Progress before the attack.Now it's at 58 after I destroyed the Command Station.

[Spikey00]

(Warp gate adds 10.)

[Volatar]

58 is hardly too high dude. Even some of the lowest AI progress games before 2.0 still were at least 200-300 or so at the end. Now you will usually have even more AI progress (by the end)

[x4000]

58 is hardly too high dude. Even some of the lowest AI progress games before 2.0 still were at least 200-300 or so at the end. Now you will usually have even more AI progress (by the end)

And those are super, super low AI Progress.  I'd expect more like 400-700 on average by the end, with the possibility of more.  I've seen a couple in the 1000+ range, but that's really on the other extreme.  Anyway, no worries -- we're all relatively new here, right?  Don't let any of the comments discourage further questions or comments of your own, V22!

[carlosjuero]

Should've read this first.I went in for my second planet, but like I noob I destroyed the AI's Orbital Command Station first, causing the AI progress to sky rocket.Now my main fleet is having to deal heavy AI reinforcements, and now larger raids are moving in fast on my home planet.My main fleet 2 jumps away from home, and I don't have the economy to build a decent defense.I'm doomed.

Best way to keep home base semi secure (at least long enough for reinforcements to arrive if needed) is to pop down a few clusters of tractor beam turrets, then some weapon turrets. I secure wormholes with clusters of 5 tractor beam turrets, clusters of MLRS and Basic Turrets, then I put a few clusters of snipers scattered about (to put clusters of 5 hold Control while placing, combined with shift means you can rapidly place 5 cluster groups quickly).

If you are low on resources then look into mass producing some low requirement ships or turrets (Laser Turrets are very low requirement I believe), and recall either your whole fleet or a good chunk of it to put in Free Roaming Defender mode at home base - plop them in the middle of the system (or the nearest 'mid' point for any incursion wormholes) and you should be good.

AI Progress of 50+ isn't bad, it will go much higher pretty quick - you need to colonize worlds to keep resources coming in, and colonizing worlds means a jump of at least 20 progress (destroying gate and command station) if not more (SF Base, train station, etc).

[V22 Osprey]

Wow....noob fail. 58 AI Progress is nothing compared to what it can get late-game.

I think I just suck at economy in this game.I barely have enough materials to build a fleet sizable to attack a planet, let alone built a strong defense.The one planet I did take has like *no* resources on it what so ever.It also seems I've run into a level IV Planet. Those planets are scarey, I lost my scout in less than a second before coming out of the wormhole.Not enough time to spy on this monster planet.

I think I'm going to go on defense for awhile and stock pile some resources.I may have to abandon the one planet I took as I can't fully secure it.(Enemy astro trains fly in-n-out, including enemy ships.)

[x4000]

Don't forget the power of turrets.  We've just been having a discussion about that over here.  If Astro Trains are getting you down, that may be a good idea then to either raid their nearby train stations, or build counter-dark-matter turrets to protect your other turrets.  Then they won't be attritting your defenses constantly. 

I'd also try not to get too hung up on attacking the really higher level planets that might be nearby right at the start -- instead, just take out the really easy, smaller planets, and use them for bolstering your economy.  Even if they have next to no resources, the command station itself that you build there will give a goodly amount.  If you have K sitting around, you can even unlock higher-level command stations to get even more metal/crystal out of it; that's a favorite thing of mine to do.