AI War Featured Today In Steam's Holiday Sale Gift Pile Objectives

[cupogoodness]

Originally posted: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2011/12/ai-war-featured-today-in-steams-holiday.html

Our space strategy title AI War is featured today on Steam's Holiday Sale Gift Pile! For those participating in the mega giveaway contest, make sure to snag the holiday-themed achievement for a gift and/or another token to put into the drawing that will see one entrant walking away with the entire Steam catalog. Which is rather insane.

What's the objective you say? Glad you asked:

In The Midst Of A Cold, Dark Winter - Lose at least 30,000 ships in a single game.

Best of luck picking it up and adding the loot to your growing pile! Remember that both AI War (75% off) and our puzzler Tidalis (just $2) plus all DLC are on massive discount via Steam today through December 31st.

[KDR_11k]

The German translation is faulty, it says you must KILL 30000 ships, not lose them.

Also I already had that achievement before it got renamed but it isn't marked as completed on the pile page. Issue on Steam's side?

[@B0FH]

I know this sort of thing is to be expected, but disappointed that most people are just swapping a savefile around and renaming their Steam IDs temporarily (so the profile names match) rather than actually achieving this.

[Volatar]

I know this sort of thing is to be expected, but disappointed that most people are just swapping a savefile around and renaming their Steam IDs temporarily (so the profile names match) rather than actually achieving this.

It's not really an easily obtainable thing. Especially in the limited time available between now and Christmas.

[Ktoff]

Works with a save. In my current game I had already lost 25k ships, easy to have another 5000 killed :-D

OR, if you just want the achievement, you could just cheat and send thousands of (ineffective) ships against a devourer golem....

[@B0FH]

I know this sort of thing is to be expected, but disappointed that most people are just swapping a savefile around and renaming their Steam IDs temporarily (so the profile names match) rather than actually achieving this.

It's not really an easily obtainable thing. Especially in the limited time available between now and Christmas.

Between now and Jan 2nd, but yeah I know what you mean - for those unfamilure with the game it isn't the easiest task to complete in the time scale, but then again that's why it is an "achievement"

[BoinKlasik]

The German translation is faulty, it says you must KILL 30000 ships, not lose them.

Also I already had that achievement before it got renamed but it isn't marked as completed on the pile page. Issue on Steam's side?

I have the exact same issue, I had it before.  Hell I even played a new game and got it again by just starting with a swarmer ship and sending a stream of them at a nearby ai fortress, no credit for the new achievement, but the old achievement still shows up as achieved in the game stats ui.

:/

[Echo35]

I know this sort of thing is to be expected, but disappointed that most people are just swapping a savefile around and renaming their Steam IDs temporarily (so the profile names match) rather than actually achieving this.

It's not really an easily obtainable thing. Especially in the limited time available between now and Christmas.

It runs until Jan 2nd, and the achievements are retroactive. Shouldn't be that hard to obtain.

[eRe4s3r]

To be fair, the achievement is fairly difficult if you face the wrong AI and have the wrong ships

My average "winning" games have me never more losses than 9k maybe because i know how to play the game?

Anyway.. it really does take you at least a 3 hour game to get to a point where you can get this achievement easily (just spamming minipods into the sector where a super fortress and tachyon golem sat solved this ;p)

And all i got is a coal of lump ;P Or a lump of coal...

[Elukka]

I doubt I've ever in my 100 hours of playing this game lost 30 000 ships in one game. Granted, I do have a bit of a case of newgameitis, but it seems a bit excessive for the generally casual Steam competition.

[Bas92]

There is a really easy way to obtain this achievement:

Pick a 20 planet map versus two level 1 AI's, both Shield Ninny (requires the DLC though, otherwise pick a defensive one). Give them -300% resources and yourself +300%. Disable waves and set AI auto progress to 0. Choose the snake map type.

Now keep generating new maps until you get a very cheap, spammable unit. I picked Neinzul Youngling Nanoswarm. Select 15 homeworlds, start the campaign and go to your 'frontline'. Now set the speed to +10 and build a lot of engineers (50-100). Then, build a lot of turrets. Heavy beam turrets, fortresses... whatever you want.

For the last step, go to the planet with the spammable unit, build 12-20 space docks, set them all to loop and place a waypoint on the last AI planet (alt + right click on the galaxy map). They'll start sending units and all you have to do now is wait. With the speed at +10 it took me only a few minutes until I got the achievement.

By the way, this achievement has created quite a lot of new activity on the AI War Steam forums. Sadly most people only care about the achievement and have no further interest in this game (too complex). But hey, maybe some people will not immediately give up and decide to give it a try thanks to the achievement .

[keith.lamothe]

By the way, this achievement has created quite a lot of new activity on the AI War Steam forums. Sadly most people only care about the achievement and have no further interest in this game (too complex). But hey, maybe some people will not immediately give up and decide to give it a try thanks to the achievement .

We had hoped to make people think about how to "achieve" this, and in the process realize that there's quite a bit to the game

Probably could have come up with something more interesting, but we didn't have a lot of time to make and test something new, etc.

Anyway, we are pleased to have provided some assistance in the Quest For Coal

[gaspardo]

Hi,

The steam holiday achievement got me finally playing the game I had bought several months ago but couldn't quite summon the will to play. I bought it following a couple of great reviews and overwhelmingly positive player feedback but I didn't have the patience to sit through the tutorials because there was obviously so much to learn and my attention-span had been severely shortened by other, less demanding genres of games.

On my initial mission to earn more coal, I thought "I own this game, shouldn't be too tough of an achievement to get, going by some of the easier ones on the list". So I loaded it up and launched the first tutorial and tried to give it a fair shake, but I spent over an hour, on and off, trying to get into it - to no avail. So I searched for and found the savegame that's floating around.

I've never been a huge fan of RTS games - the last one I played and enjoyed was Master of Orion 2 so, so long ago - and copied over the file into the game's directory, where it sat for 10 seconds before I moved it back to the desktop. I'm not usually one for achievements, but I didn't want an easy win without having even played the game, so I booted it up again and sat through the 4 tutorials, up to the assisted campaign which eventually took up all of my evening. And I'm so glad I persevered.

I have just started my second game (having lost my first one in less than a couple of hours) and am enjoying seeing it all open up as I play, finding that there is so much more game beyond the basics that were explained and that I can look forward to discovering technologies, strategies and tactics which I can barely see from my vantage point. I'm flying solo, and the possibilities seem endless.

I may not get that piece of coal from the AI War achievement, but it is no longer my main focus. I can't wait to get back to my insignificant homeworld, build it up and strike out into the vast unknown.

[keith.lamothe]

I may not get that piece of coal from the AI War achievement, but it is no longer my main focus. I can't wait to get back to my insignificant homeworld, build it up and strike out into the vast unknown.

I was hoping that sort of thing would happen with the achievement   You probably won't get it playing normally, but you'll probably be able to figure out how to do it.

[Cyborg]

51 min. and 30 seconds. I think I should have been able to do this faster if I had set up neinzul spaceships to auto attack. Now that I'm thinking of it, I think there's even a better way to do it. Thanks for the puzzle guys, it was fun. I hope that you do something equally interesting for a challenge objective next time!

Spoiler(how do you properly do this with this bulletin board?):
defender mode, four hours, maximum handicaps in both directions (self and AI), high ship capacity, turn off the modifiers, turn on blitz mode, turn off starships, choose high ship count units (seven planets), create a ball of units and take out other planets, research your  high ship capacity units and one mark of the fleet for defensive reasons