What happens next? AI build up huge, never attacks.

[Grok]

Hi all. I'm 15 hours into a game vs. two AI's both of whom only ever really attack in small forces or at the timed events. They are 7.3 randoms. It's been extremely easy to defend against. I"m 4 jumps out from the 1st home world, my AI's stand at 252 alert.

Now I'm going to try to get to the first homeworld without nukes by fighting my way through two IV systems, but my plans may change.

Currently, through constant reinforcement, split between 3 planets, there are 7500 units waiting one hop from my home world.

What should I do?

Its about 2500 per system, maybe 1 of them is 2 jumps. There is also an exogalaxy worm hole.

I sat a FRD fleet at my home world of 800 t-I ships, limiting me to maybe 900-1200 ships to use for offense. Just incase the AI changes it mind. about turtling.

If I count units taht are 2 jumps away, there are probably 12000 AI ships clustered about my Homeworld.

Will they ever attack? What do I need to defend against that? Should I take a fleet and whittle down those numbers and start blowing up warp gates? What is the Alert threshold where the AI decides to crush me?

My current plan is to cluster engineers at my home world around 2 constructors return all ships to center and build tremendous amount of turrets etc on my home world. I will perch 2 nukes there too so that if I see the enmy start to move in a wave that is indefensible I can blow up the planets they're approaching through. The AI's are favoring electric A ships, and raiders and gatlings. I've captured two advanced research ships, and I have T3 bombers and Cruisers +raider,leech, flag ship, MRS, counter-missle, counter dark matter, EngII, Cmd II, ShieldII, exo-harv, ....Probably some other shit.

When my ships blow up the first ai home world, if the AI's rush me, I'm going to delete everything but the starships in my attack fleet and start building like crazy back home. Should I worry about this, or will the AI's continue to turtle? is any of this plan crazy stupid?
My best

-Grok

[x4000]

252 AI Progress is very low, the AI won't be very threatening like that. When it gets up to the 400-500 range, it is more trouble.  Of course, the occasional cross-planet attack, or a raid at the wrong time against the wrong place, can also spell big trouble.

But in general, aside from cross-planet attacks, the AI does not attack you with its forces on its other planets.  This goes back to the general design of the AI, and what it's motivations are.

[laxrulz777]

252 AI Progress is very low,

I laughed a bit at this. 252 AI Progress is much higher than I usually get to and I'd be pounding out the data center raids at this point... It's one of the nice things about this game is that there are different strategies like that.

[x4000]

252 AI Progress is very low,

I laughed a bit at this. 252 AI Progress is much higher than I usually get to and I'd be pounding out the data center raids at this point... It's one of the nice things about this game is that there are different strategies like that.

Oh, absolutely, there are a variety of ways to play.  But those who economize to an extreme degree on the AI Progress tend to need to play on high AI difficulties, in the 8 range instead of the 7 range.  Also, I tend to play 4-player more than anything else, and the AI Progress can trend higher there because of the need to take more territory for resources.  In other words, it's hard to play ultra-conservatively when there are more players in the game, just because you need more room to move around and such.  But yeah, you have a good point.

[Grok]

So I can move those 800 ships to the front line, minus something to take care of the threat level (129 or whatever) and fight at full strength,  I effectively never have to worry about the 12000 ships the AI erroneously garrisoned worlds one to two hops from my home planet? In effect the only ships that will attack me are small cross border raids, spawn warnings, and anything that follows me back from a planet I attack?

My layout


AI 2500             AI 2500                        AI 2500_____________
|                         |                                   |                        |
Home 800 --- exp, shileded wormhole, heavy D---exp-----------exp----exp----exp----exp--- AI 2500                                       AI HO
|                         |                                   |                             |                                                                                      |
AI 2500             AI 2500---------------- TIII AI 2500--------------exp----AI----AI---exp Offensive fleet----IV AI800+-----IIIAI----IV
                                                                                              |                        |                                                               
                                                                                              AI----AI----AI-----

this is not to mention things like a cluster of III's and IV's 3 jumps away from my home.

[x4000]

This is the essence of the game:  the AI starts out with literally over 20,000 ships, you start out with something like 6.  They don't give a flip about you.  But as you start taking over their territory more, etc, they start to care more.  However, it's basically a big bureaucracy, and not all of the AI ships are aware that you even exist, or what is going on.  So there might be huge armies over near your planets, but that just makes those planets harder to take, it doesn't really increase your risk particularly.  In general, adjacency to huge planets does not matter, because AI ships are not allowed to attack unless you set them free or there is a cross-planet attack.

There are three main rulesets for AI Ships:
- Free (can do anything, and attack you whenever)
- Guard (can do anything within their guard radius, but that is it)
- Special Forces (move on patrol between planets, become Free when they see you).

How do ships become free?
- When ships come in via a wave, they are Free from the start. 
- When you destroy a Guard Post, its ships become free. 
- When you destroy a command station, there is a 50% chance of their ships becoming free. 
- When the AI launches cross-planet attacks, it will set something like 1000 to 2000 ships free across its empire, really diffusely, so that the ships come at you from all directions.
- When Special Forces ships encounter your ships on a planet, they become Free.
- In the expansion, certain ships like Raid Engines and Alarm Posts can create extra waves or set ships free under different rules.

Otherwise, guards just guard, and special forces ships just patrol.  This is the handicap of the AI, as it were, and what keeps it from slaughtering you in the first 30 seconds or less of the game.  You're expanding through their space, and for the most part they are not actively hunting you.  We as the humans have already lost the war, and are insignificant ants now. They still try to swat the ants, but it is not a huge priority for them compared to whatever other activities (that are largely unknown at the moment) they are doing.  Their attention is basically focused outside the galaxy on something else.  But, as you make ingresses into their territory, and cause increasing amounts of trouble for them, their estimation of you grows.  They start seeing you as being more than an ant, and that causes much more challenges.

Hope that helps!

[Grok]

 I really just don't want to lose this game! So I was making sure

I was concerned that the mobility of gaurd units might go up as AI alert did.

It seems that it does, but if it's statistically random and limited to a certain range, there's a very low probability I will actually have to defend against those 5000 ships one hop away in one massive attack.

Storyline, After conquering galaxy, the AI, based on something vaguely referred to as Wyndos programming has crashed. Humans now succeed because the communications between one entity and another have broken down. The AI reinforces because it no longer recieves any feedback, that is until our actions activate a higher order of programming. Think like a perversion of asimov's three laws: 1st law Destroy the enemy so long as it does not risk vital resources. 2nd Protect vital resources. 3rd law, make necessary preparations for war. The glitch is in the third law programming. As you attack stations, the 2nd law becomes active, triggering greater and greater responses. Finally when the core is destroyed, so is the source of the glitch in units it manages to communicate with before it goes offline are returned to their own programming.

The truth is the AI was better at war than the humans. Later you could create a sci-fi rpg where one anti-war group hacks the AI. But in hacking it to end something as retarded as galactic scale warfare, they accidentally destroy the original first law: don't turn on humans allied to you. The plan was executed simultaneously on  many AI's (there were more than 2 originally), but the two oldest one's based on centralized programming, end up with this same glitch.

[Revenantus]

I really just don't want to lose this game! So I was making sure

I was concerned that the mobility of gaurd units might go up as AI alert did.

It seems that it does, but if it's statistically random and limited to a certain range, there's a very low probability I will actually have to defend against those 5000 ships one hop away in one massive attack.

The AI's cross planet attacks will consist of ships drafted from a number of its planets, but it won't generally attack with more than about 2000 at a time (not entirely certain if there's an absolute limit, though).

However, if you destroy the command station on a planet, you may well end up being attacked by every single ship stationed there as they have a 50% chance of becoming free, so be careful in that regard. There's also another 50% chance that the AI ships will become free if you build a command station there after having destroyed the AI's command station.

Storyline, After conquering galaxy, the AI, based on something vaguely referred to as Wyndos programming has crashed. Humans now succeed because the communications between one entity and another have broken down. The AI reinforces because it no longer recieves any feedback, that is until our actions activate a higher order of programming. Think like a perversion of asimov's three laws: 1st law Destroy the enemy so long as it does not risk vital resources. 2nd Protect vital resources. 3rd law, make necessary preparations for war. The glitch is in the third law programming. As you attack stations, the 2nd law becomes active, triggering greater and greater responses. Finally when the core is destroyed, so is the source of the glitch in units it manages to communicate with before it goes offline are returned to their own programming.

The truth is the AI was better at war than the humans. Later you could create a sci-fi rpg where one anti-war group hacks the AI. But in hacking it to end something as retarded as galactic scale warfare, they accidentally destroy the original first law: don't turn on humans allied to you. The plan was executed simultaneously on  many AI's (there were more than 2 originally), but the two oldest one's based on centralized programming, end up with this same glitch.

This is one of the benefits of only providing a fairly vague storyline; it allows everyone to be creative and design their own plot for their universe.

I like to think that the AI is involved in a far greater conflict elsewhere in the universe. Humans don't possess the technology required to build ships capable of traversing exo-galactic wormholes, so it isn't hugely concerned with the events in its home galaxy. As the humans become more threatening and pose a danger to its infrastructure, it makes some effort to defend it, and even destroy the remaining humans, but in the grand scheme of things this one galaxy is of minor interest to the AI; after all, the humans have no technology that's of interest to it anyway. Even if its core command station is destroyed, it will just go on with its tasks elsewhere in the universe. One day, it'll reemerge, wielding advanced alien technology to crush the remaining humans, after it's dealt with the more immediate threats to itself.

[RCIX]

I like to think that the AI is involved in a far greater conflict elsewhere in the universe. Humans don't possess the technology required to build ships capable of traversing exo-galactic wormholes, so it isn't hugely concerned with the events in its home galaxy.

Then how do you explain that you're fighting against the exact same ships, only AI versions?

[Revenantus]

I like to think that the AI is involved in a far greater conflict elsewhere in the universe. Humans don't possess the technology required to build ships capable of traversing exo-galactic wormholes, so it isn't hugely concerned with the events in its home galaxy.

Then how do you explain that you're fighting against the exact same ships, only AI versions?

The AI took control over most of humanity's military assets when it went rogue, including all our advanced factories. The only ships the AI has designed itself are the core variants, which come into the galaxy via the exo-galactic wormholes because there's no hardware on the map capable of manufacturing them.

[RCIX]

I like to think that the AI is involved in a far greater conflict elsewhere in the universe. Humans don't possess the technology required to build ships capable of traversing exo-galactic wormholes, so it isn't hugely concerned with the events in its home galaxy.

Then how do you explain that you're fighting against the exact same ships, only AI versions?

The AI took control over most of humanity's military assets when it went rogue, including all our advanced factories. The only ships the AI has designed itself are the core variants, which come into the galaxy via the exo-galactic wormholes because there's no hardware on the map capable of manufacturing them.

But as i understand it, *all* AI ships are built outside of the galaxy for whatever reason, then shipped in. Not to be argumentative or anything, but it just confuses me

[Revenantus]

I like to think that the AI is involved in a far greater conflict elsewhere in the universe. Humans don't possess the technology required to build ships capable of traversing exo-galactic wormholes, so it isn't hugely concerned with the events in its home galaxy.

Then how do you explain that you're fighting against the exact same ships, only AI versions?

The AI took control over most of humanity's military assets when it went rogue, including all our advanced factories. The only ships the AI has designed itself are the core variants, which come into the galaxy via the exo-galactic wormholes because there's no hardware on the map capable of manufacturing them.

But as i understand it, *all* AI ships are built outside of the galaxy for whatever reason, then shipped in. Not to be argumentative or anything, but it just confuses me

When the AI took control of most of humanity's assets, it had hundreds of thousands of ships that were intended for use in the civil war. Once it discovered warp gates (which facilitate travel through exo-galactic wormholes), it sent most of these out into the galaxy, leaving only a fraction of its force behind. It's those ships which are returned via warp gates to fight the rising threat of humanity, along with a few of the core ships it has since developed.

You will not defeat me! Don't make me publish my fanfic!

[RCIX]

I like to think that the AI is involved in a far greater conflict elsewhere in the universe. Humans don't possess the technology required to build ships capable of traversing exo-galactic wormholes, so it isn't hugely concerned with the events in its home galaxy.

Then how do you explain that you're fighting against the exact same ships, only AI versions?

The AI took control over most of humanity's military assets when it went rogue, including all our advanced factories. The only ships the AI has designed itself are the core variants, which come into the galaxy via the exo-galactic wormholes because there's no hardware on the map capable of manufacturing them.

But as i understand it, *all* AI ships are built outside of the galaxy for whatever reason, then shipped in. Not to be argumentative or anything, but it just confuses me

When the AI took control of most of humanity's assets, it had hundreds of thousands of ships that were intended for use in the civil war. Once it discovered warp gates (which facilitate travel through exo-galactic wormholes), it sent most of these out into the galaxy, leaving only a fraction of its force behind. It's those ships which are returned via warp gates to fight the rising threat of humanity, along with a few of the core ships it has since developed.

You will not defeat me! Don't make me publish my fanfic!

Ok ok i buy it, calm down!

[Baleur]

I like to think that the AI is involved in a far greater conflict elsewhere in the universe. Humans don't possess the technology required to build ships capable of traversing exo-galactic wormholes, so it isn't hugely concerned with the events in its home galaxy.

Then how do you explain that you're fighting against the exact same ships, only AI versions?

Because without any squishy organic humans piloting the ships, they can travel through whatever insane radiation-heavy wormholes and wierdness-in-space they want 

Making up reasons is fun 

[Grok]

I don't think humans are actually piloting the ships. I think humans have perverted the manufacturing process of one AI to their own ends right on the brink of destruction. It does, however, take a lot of humans to keep things running in those factories (without corruptible computers), so you have establish a manned command station in system.

I don't buy the AI being busy elsewhere. Any rational organism will respond to an infection. Any AI designed especially to kill people would be hyper conscious of this, and already know how to kill them. The AI may very well be doing things outside the galaxy, but I have to insist that at the moment it is broken, if only because 12000 ships could swat me out of the sky, and they don't move. Yet they are building up like they are aware of my presence. The consciousness without the action is disjointed. I know this is a timing/survival mechanic, but any story which doesn't handle these mechanics will make the game feel ridiculous in my imagination.

We are also dealing with AI cores. Destruction of the AI core stops something. Let us presume it stops the construction of new ships and equipment.

But maybe something more insidious is going on? Maybe the AI is defending us from something else outside the galaxy, and obliterated humanity so they would stop fighting each other and let the AI's defend a core of humanity from exo-glactic invaders. It never kills us. It just destroys our ability to enter space.