7 is a huge jump from 6 and other noob observations

[sarudak]

So I finally finished my first game of AI war. I was playing a 6/6 with hard golems and a few other minor options on and I enjoyed the game quite a bit. It did however feel a little easy. I felt like I was chewing through AI planets one after another with very little resistance. I went for a medium/low AIP strategy and was attacking the second AI planet with something like 400 AIP.

For my next game I went to 7/7 and added fallen spire and I found the jump in difficulty to be rather jarring. I wonder why there is no difficulty levels between 6 and 7 where it seems like many players would fall? Then again maybe some of the problem came from fallen spire I'm guessing the AI response is not affected by your AIP since I only had 4 planets when retrieving the shard for the colony ship and was assaulted by hundreds upon hundreds of class IV and V ships which left me in such a weakened state the next wave took me out.

Golems are awesome but the Hard level still seems to be not enough of a tradeoff for such power (although maybe it would be different if I was on 7/7). Whereas I found spirecraft ships to be a little underwhelming in comparison.

Overall amazing game and I'm really enjoying it!

[Eternaly_Lost]

So I finally finished my first game of AI war. I was playing a 6/6 with hard golems and a few other minor options on and I enjoyed the game quite a bit. It did however feel a little easy. I felt like I was chewing through AI planets one after another with very little resistance. I went for a medium/low AIP strategy and was attacking the second AI planet with something like 400 AIP.

For my next game I went to 7/7 and added fallen spire and I found the jump in difficulty to be rather jarring. I wonder why there is no difficulty levels between 6 and 7 where it seems like many players would fall? Then again maybe some of the problem came from fallen spire I'm guessing the AI response is not affected by your AIP since I only had 4 planets when retrieving the shard for the colony ship and was assaulted by hundreds upon hundreds of class IV and V ships which left me in such a weakened state the next wave took me out.

Golems are awesome but the Hard level still seems to be not enough of a tradeoff for such power (although maybe it would be different if I was on 7/7). Whereas I found spirecraft ships to be a little underwhelming in comparison.

Overall amazing game and I'm really enjoying it!

One thing to keep in mind about fallen spire is that the response is very much how much of the campaign you have finished. It does not matter if you have only 1 planet or if you have 119 planets with only the other AI homeworld to go, the response you get depends on how much  you have done. I find that it works best to secure about 10-15 or so planets before I start I really start on the campaign to make sure that I have enough materials to work with to hold back the Exo waves that come.

Golem and Spirecraft hard however are directly linked to AI progress. The higher it gets, the faster and stronger the exo waves can come. Budget fills up based on AI Progress and Budget max is based on AI progress as well.

[Diazo]

First, what did you have Fallen Spire set to? 4/10?

For all the variable minor factions, 4/10 is kind of the agreed on 'standard'.

Also note that I personally consider a 7/7 game against the AI easier then a 7/7 game following the Fallen Spire campaign.

Opinions vary on how difficult enabling the different minor factions and options (including Fallen Spire) make the game, but I consider most of them to make the game harder, even if only by a little bit, when enabled.

D.

[sarudak]

Yeah everything was set to 4/10. So Fallen Spire is harder than a regular game? Should I be trying it on 6/6 before moving to 7/7.

Kinda what I'm hoping for is an intermediate challenge between the ease of 6/6 and the difficulty of 7/7. I suppose I could just try 7/6....

[Martyn van Buren]

If you feel like you know your way around the game well enough, I'd suggest turning off most of the options that get you attacked (golems/spirecraft hard, hybrids, FS) and doing a basic 80-planet 7/7.  That's sort of the default game that things are balanced around and it's a good place to start.  Or 7/6 if you're less confident, but I imagine if you can deal with exoes on 6/6 plain 7/7 should be fine. 

I'm not quite sure what the differences are, by the way, but the developers say that at 7 the AI stops making intentional mistakes and plays as well as it can.

[sarudak]

Really? I thought Golems made things alot easier....

[TechSY730]

Really? I thought Golems made things alot easier....

generally

At difficulty 7, Golems (medium) and Golems (hard) generally help more than they hurt. However, once you start getting really high up in difficulty, the downsides will begin to hurt much more. (On medium, the AIP when repaired will start mattering much more, on hard, the exo-waves can get pretty nasty)

[sarudak]

Yeah on 6/6 the exo waves were a joke and the Golems could handle whole systems by themselves.

[keith.lamothe]

Fallen Spire is pretty brutal if you're not ready for it.  Once you know what's going on it's not a lot harder than the normal game, just different.

Anyway, yea, a 7/7 vanilla game would be a good step betwen 6/6 + crazy-stuff and 7/7 + crazy-stuff

[Kahuna]

I went for a medium/low AIP strategy and was attacking the second AI planet with something like 400 AIP.

I think 400 is extremely high. At least vs higher difficulties it's a good idea to keep it under 150. Selecting which planets you take and which planets you neuter is part of the strategy. Try being more selective about which planets you capture and keep.

Also think about what's killing you or making your game fail. Then think how you can fix it. And don't forget to pop those Data Centers and Co-Processors and to hack the Super Terminal.

[keith.lamothe]

400 is survivable on diff 7, but even there it's way higher than it needs to be.

[Mick]

I don't see how we can play a "normal" game and keep the AIP under 150.

[sarudak]

I don't remember exactly. It might have been more like 350 and that was after I had popped the first AI command center so it was in the 200's before I did my first assault.

[Kahuna]

I don't see how we can play a "normal" game and keep the AIP under 150.

Carefully select the planets you take and take advantage of AIP reduction stuff.
This is from my current game vs 10/10 AIs.



EDIT: Oh and I still have 2 Data Centers and the Super Terminal left.

[keith.lamothe]

You can probably count on 160 AIP worth of reduction from data centers + coprocessors, leaving the superterminal out of things.  So your total "budget" for keeping under 150 is closer to 300.

But keeping under 150 isn't necessary at 7; under 250 or even 300 should be fine if you have a reasonable scenario (and defensive position).

On 9+, yea, if you see the other side of 200 you're probably going to be seeing game-over soon.  Unless it's FS or something like that.