But does it deliver on that promise?
Yes.
The more I've played recently, the more I've realized that even though each scenario and situation can differ wildly, they must all be handled in a similar way. The ships you unlock, the technology you choose, the tactics that you use - I've realized that in every game, these stay almost exactly the same with little variation.
Not in my experience. My fleets have been:
Speed-based: using exp speed boosters, tractors and engine damage to chop the enemy into bite-size pieces.
Carrier based: a core of SBS, TDLs, and Neinzul enclaves, with other ships there to keep the enemy off the carriers.
Long-range bombardment: Z bombards and missile frigates, fighters to intercept enemy bombers.
Brute force: throw everything under an umbrella of shield bearers.
Starship based: don't unlock any fleetships, use the cheap mkIs as a cheap screen for the starship core.
And that is all base-game. Golems and spirecraft each add a huge array of fleet compositions/tactics. (FS is allowed to win by brute force, of course).
The champion and its minions form a fast, heavy-hitting strikeforce to augment your base fleet. The champion abilities allow for more tactics.
Where before there was strategy and critical thinking before each battle, it has now devolved into an extremely repetitious process of taking every planet in the exact same way, with little resistance, and little chance of failure.
Taking a planet in itself
shouldn't be that big a deal. Dealing with the consequences should be. And yes, there should be some challenging planets in there, and there are (the first couple you take, eyes, inter-p boosters, raid engines, fortresses, planets with tons of snipers etc).
I'm talking about blobbing.
Here we go again: strategic blobbing, or bringing your entire mobile fleet in to conquer a planet, should confer advantages. If you have sufficient defences without your mobile fleet, then you have earned the right to blob.
Tactical blobbing is more of a problem, and here I agree with you. But there are counters, enough so that you cannot do it "mindlessly" and expect good results. Take a self-destruct guardian, for example.
This is a strategy game isn't it? When did it stop becoming a strategy game?
Yes. Never. The strategy comes from which planets you take, when you take them, and how long you hold them. And that is different every game. A "tactical" problem for me is, say, a CPA attacking in more than one place: how will I deploy my fleet? Or: exo attacking the FactIV: do I try to hold it, and risk losing outright, or do I turtle up at my homeworld (or bust out the warheads)? Planetary problems are sub-tactical issues.
At what point did mindlessly moving all of your units into a vastly superior enemy army become a "good idea"?
First, mindless will lose. Second, even a mkIV planet rarely has anything approaching "vastly superior".
The entire idea of the game is to out-think and outplay your vastly superior AI opponent is it not? If you could win purely by blunt force and direct combat, then the humans never would have lost the war to begin with. So why does the game reward you for brute forcing your opponent then? I can't think of a good answer to this question.
Just because we can win planetary battles does not mean we are winning by brute force. Brute force would be taking far more planets than necessary. Do that, and the game will hammer you as advertized.
That is not good design, and the game suffers for it.
Lancaster's law is a fundamental fact of any wargame, not bad design.
AI War's fundamental problem comes down to a problem of lethality.
I strongly disagree here. Fleet-to-fleet combat lasts minutes at most. This seems about right. And having higher lethality would mean those sub-fleets on the AI planets would die against your blob even faster, without the small chance to support each other they have now. (also, doesn't Blitz/normal/epic style do this, if you want to change the lethality?)
Increasing lethality would, I think, increase blobbing. Tactical strike teams would be cut down before they could do anything useful.
Finally, I do support making the planetary-level stuff more interesting. I just don't think there are any fundamental problems with the game.
Dynamic Defence GuardiansAI Defence Fleets