AI War state of the game

[TechSY730]

Ok, new, trimmed down todo list.

-Nerf higher mark harvesters (either directly by reducing their output and/or increasing their unlock costs, by removing them, or indirectly by removing the HW bonus to number of spots, or some combination thereof)
-Balance champion games, especially nebula resource rewards and AI response
-Continue the balance work on the bonus ships
-Add some, possibly optional way to allow the AI to counter attack stronger than just the naturally freed ships from failed attacks and other aggressive actions would imply
-Armor and hull type distribution rebalance

Does this seem about right?

[Wingflier]

And this is what makes me distrust your motivations here. We both know that's an outright lie, because the thread in question has you bragging about being argumentative specifically about games!

In the off-topic forum.

Don't tell me what my motivations are, you know almost nothing about me.  That is extremely insulting for someone who barely knows me, to tell ME what my motivations are.

My motivations are to improve this game in whatever way possible.  If I didn't care, I wouldn't bother.

Okay, aside from the fact you are full of shi*

Now resorting to Ad Hominem Attacks?

Whatever respect I had for you is gone.

[Coppermantis]

Hey guys, calm down. No need for insults here.


Anyway, my opinion is from a much less experienced player compared to some of the others here. I have also not read this thread in its entirety, but for what it's worth:

I do not believe that the game is poorly paced so that the challenge only comes once every hour or so with a CPA, Exo or otherwise. Playing on 7/7-8/8 I find that I am being sufficiently challenged by waves that come in, dealing with threat/SF fleets, managing my offensive fleet, dealing with certain minor factions and so on that the game is not dull. Sure, I can blob a lot of worlds. Blobbing as far as micro is concerned is fine for a grand strategy game.

I do believe, however, that the AI response to blobs should be greater, at least for high-ish level planets. If you were a commander and you saw that two thousand enemy ships were overrunning an even moderately important base, would you just sit and watch? If you had insufficient forces, yeah, but the whole point is that the AI will always have sufficient forces to deal with you. If you're threatening it at all, it should react accordingly. Personally, I'd like to see blobs be non-viable except in  two cases: the early game where you don't have much and are just hitting low-level worlds; and the very end game where you have a fleet that is capable of dealing with the AI deployed in full force. Sending a full blob to an AI World should provoke a response to be feared. I do use guerrilla attacks to deal with eyes and snipe important targets, but other than that I can blob freely.

I'm not sure what the general consensus is on economy but I find it to be a non-issue, i.e. I do not have to worry about it while playing. In my current game I have Econ II stations and Harvesters on II and III. The only time that my economy gets hurt is when I'm building a superfortress. Energy is common enough (I do have four Z-gens, so that should be considered) that I do not need to build any converters. I agree with nerfing harvesters in some way. (Weren't they buffed at some point? I don't remember.)

Regarding the existence of "optimal strategies": Yes, there are optimal ways to play AI War. However, most players will not know those. Plus, the AI Types, Map Types and Minor Factions do force you to adapt to some extend depending on scaling and type so I do not believe that there is a problem here. AI War has a sufficient amount of variety to ensure that no two games are the same. At the very least, you've got a more varied metagame than Starcraft II. (Infestor Broodlord, all day, every day.)




In summary:

-The game is difficult enough for myself and the one friend I play with to be challenged constantly and entertainingly. I assume that we are more or less average players.
-I do not think that blobs should be discouraged for micro purposes, but rather for enforcing the theme of the game: Keep a low profile so that the AI does not notice you
-Take a look at economic balance
-There is enough variety to ensure replay value and interesting games

[Eternaly_Lost]

Ok, new, trimmed down todo list.

-Nerf higher mark harvesters (either directly by reducing their output and/or increasing their unlock costs, by removing them, or indirectly by removing the HW bonus to number of spots, or some combination thereof)
-Balance champion games, especially nebula resource rewards and AI response
-Continue the balance work on the bonus ships
-Add some, possibly optional way to allow the AI to counter attack stronger than just the naturally freed ships from failed attacks and other aggressive actions would imply
-Armor and hull type distribution rebalance

Does this seem about right?

I disagree with the first one, unless it comes with a buff to fallen spire hab centers or something to deal with the other side of the game issues. Fallen Spire is a valid way to play. Golems take a ton of resources, and you don't want to go and just increase wall time (the whole reason why they were buffed was to reduce wall time.) Just because people playing a very few world game.

Other then that, the list looks good.

[Lancefighter]

I feel like there is no need for both harvestors and econ stations. Particularly, the strength of harvestor upgrades goes up along with number of players, whereas the strength of econ station upgrades.. I dont actually think they are useful at all. They have the niche use of.. "i have a ton of resourceless systems" maybe?

I think that is where we need to focus things. Lets remove harvester upgrades, completely. Lets instead make the command station modify a system's resource output. The theory is that a mk3 econ station should be about equal in terms of resource gained to mk3 harvesters.

This mainly effects two places - The homeworld, and any military command stations. IF a station doesnt have an econ station, its losing a fair bit of resources.. Including the homesystem (hey, your homesystem gets like +300/+300 by itself. stop complaining)

In theory, its also a minor nerf to large empires as a whole - Their resource gains are now limited by the number of econ stations you can actually deploy (as per cap, or by something else)

This indirectly buffs zenith spacetime manipulators, as logistics stations become less ideal in smaller empires due to the econ3 being the ideal command station.. I like zspacetime things.

[Martyn van Buren]

I disagree with [nerfing harvesters], unless it comes with a buff to fallen spire hab centers or something to deal with the other side of the game issues. Fallen Spire is a valid way to play. Golems take a ton of resources, and you don't want to go and just increase wall time (the whole reason why they were buffed was to reduce wall time.) Just because people playing a very few world game.

I absolutely agree with this, and it's why I've suggested removing the extra resource points from home systems.  It would only seriously nerf harvesters for low-AIP games; in a Fallen Spire game you're going to have enough planets to get full use out of harvester upgrades without the extra resources on the homeworld.  We could even couple it with a light buff to harvesters --- I imagine we'd want the break-even point between Mk III harvesters and econs to come between 10 and 15 average worlds --- so that Fallen Spire players with 20 or 30 worlds get a buff overall.

To Lancefighter --- removing the extra resources would also return econ stations to their old niche; the most efficient econ upgrade for a small empire.  For low-AIP games, harvesters would remain as a less-efficient option that lets you continue to use defensive stations, while for FS and other high-AIP routes they would simply remain the dominant option.

It would be a significant nerf to what seems to be (from AARs) the common 10/10 strategy of not taking any planets at all until you're halfway through the game, but that's a very extreme approach to the game and ought to be bloody difficult to pull off.

[zoutzakje]

well, I wouldn't mind seeing harvester upgrades get removed completely. Before they got a major buff I placed Logistics literally everywhere and now that I actually use harvester upgrades I still do that. Both works fine for me, only now I often have more resources than I can spend. Though I think that, if the harvester upgrades didn't exist and looking at my current 9/9 game, I would have used 1 or 2 Econs at the start. Surrounded by worlds with absolutely no resources.

[TechSY730]

Ok, new, trimmed down todo list.

-Nerf higher mark harvesters (either directly by reducing their output and/or increasing their unlock costs, by removing them, or indirectly by removing the HW bonus to number of spots, or some combination thereof)
-Balance champion games, especially nebula resource rewards and AI response
-Continue the balance work on the bonus ships
-Add some, possibly optional way to allow the AI to counter attack stronger than just the naturally freed ships from failed attacks and other aggressive actions would imply
-Armor and hull type distribution rebalance

Does this seem about right?

I disagree with the first one, unless it comes with a buff to fallen spire hab centers or something to deal with the other side of the game issues. Fallen Spire is a valid way to play. Golems take a ton of resources, and you don't want to go and just increase wall time (the whole reason why they were buffed was to reduce wall time.) Just because people playing a very few world game.

Other then that, the list looks good.

This is also in response to other similar responses.

Yes, the proposal is to nerf higher mark harvesters, NOT overall economy immediately after game seed (aka, before any unlocks) or economic output during fallen spire.

For example, if the higher marks were removed or heavily nerfed, the spire habitation center things should get a buff in resource output.
Similarly, if the number of resource spots on the homeworld goes down, the resource output of the home command station and/or misc other home structures should go up to compensate.

[Hearteater]

At present, I find a really comfortable early-game (when I just have my homeworld) speed is at least Mk II Harvesters.  So if Harvesters go away, I'd like to see a bump in homeworld economic output a bit, just to keep the early game moving better.  I really don't like a single homeworld with no harvester upgrades for early game.  It just feels really slow and makes me wait a lot.

[Draco18s]

I'm not sure what the general consensus is on economy but I find it to be a non-issue, i.e. I do not have to worry about it while playing. In my current game I have Econ II stations and Harvesters on II and III. The only time that my economy gets hurt is when I'm building a superfortress. Energy is common enough (I do have four Z-gens, so that should be considered) that I do not need to build any converters. I agree with nerfing harvesters in some way. (Weren't they buffed at some point? I don't remember.)

Underlined:
That's...kind of the problem we're talking about.  That should not happen.  One should always be checking their economy to see what they can afford.  If you only bottom out while building THE single most expensive structure in the game, then your economy is bloated and over-producing, and the game needs to be tweaked to bring it back in line.

[TechSY730]

I'm not sure what the general consensus is on economy but I find it to be a non-issue, i.e. I do not have to worry about it while playing. In my current game I have Econ II stations and Harvesters on II and III. The only time that my economy gets hurt is when I'm building a superfortress. Energy is common enough (I do have four Z-gens, so that should be considered) that I do not need to build any converters. I agree with nerfing harvesters in some way. (Weren't they buffed at some point? I don't remember.)

Underlined:
That's...kind of the problem we're talking about.  That should not happen.  One should always be checking their economy to see what they can afford.  If you only bottom out while building THE single most expensive structure in the game, then your economy is bloated and over-producing, and the game needs to be tweaked to bring it back in line.

Agreed that there are either too many ways too boost economy and/or the ways to boost economy are not balanced in mind of how many ways there are to boost it.

However, I would like to point out, even with Mk. III harvesters and Mk. II econ stations (giving a whopping 2.5k of each a second), trying to build a full cap of all my starships can still drain my economy.

[Mánagarmr]

Okay, aside from the fact you are full of shi*

That's extremely unnecessary and you're out of line. You may not agree with him, but that kind of behaviour is NOT welcome on these boards.

[Martyn van Buren]

At present, I find a really comfortable early-game (when I just have my homeworld) speed is at least Mk II Harvesters.  So if Harvesters go away, I'd like to see a bump in homeworld economic output a bit, just to keep the early game moving better.  I really don't like a single homeworld with no harvester upgrades for early game.  It just feels really slow and makes me wait a lot.

How do you normally start off?  I generally try to rush a world with just fighters (often just Mk I fighters) within the first five/ten minutes, I guess precisely to be able to get an econ station up (I haven't got used to using harvesters even though they are presently clearly better), but I can totally believe that that might be too dangerous a move on higher difficulties --- especially since up to diff 8 you can certainly survive the first three/four waves with pretty minimal turret placements.  Not arguing, just haven't had the same experience and am curious to hear about your playstyle.

I do think an economy rebalance shouldn't rely on buffing spire hubs to make up for lost income elsewhere ---- we want non-FS high-AIP strategies to remain potentially valid-if-not-optimal too, right? So I think we want a system where taking a lot of worlds is always going to lead to a pretty strong economy.  I don't care for that kind of play but I'm glad to know someone's out there pumping out starships to deal with waves of a thousand core ships.

[LordSloth]

There's a lot here to catch up on, (currently on pg 16), and way too much for me to attempt to respond intelligently to.

First up, I'm not that good a player in SP. I *am* challenged by 7 difficulty AI, often enough, with random moderates, and some source of automatic AIP over time. I tend to avoid Hard Spirecraft/Golems/Hybrid Hives. I almost always play with one homeworld, and I have some defense problems with my preferred extended empires. I play on normal ship cap, normal speed, full complexity. I tend to play longer games than I would like - I'm trying to improve my speed of play so games complete in a more reasonable time. I also don't play many games in a short time frame - instead playing over the course of weeks in fairly short sittings.

I am very strange, but I do not find myself blobbing all the time and I do not find myself taking the same knowledge choices. In fact, (in singleplayer 1 HW) I almost never find myself unlocking upgraded harvesters; it is rather weird how I almost always find the corner of the galaxy with the lowest possible number of resource asteroids.

On the blobbing front, I certainly do bring my fleet into a system as a big blob, and do often move it to certain targets as a big blob. However, with the special forces and improved guardians, I often do find myself splitting my forces up into three groups in-system. The fighters clear out the guardians for the sake of my starships, the frigates often stay near the wormhole out before later taking out the MLRS posts/spec ops posts because of their low speed, etc.

I still find Special Forces Patrols challenging and noteworthy after their new balance point. Something like 100+ Zombards, or Gravity Drains, or Tractor Platforms cause me problems - ones I can work through or prevent outright through elimination in other systems. I can eliminate them, I can work around them, they're good. I tend to use Mk2 Eco Command Stations, but due to map seeds, do not see the value of Harvester upgrades.

A suggestion: Try one Golemite AI and one random, Human Colony Rebellions, Zenith Miners, Spire Civilian Leaders, and (optional: Fallen Spire) on a simple/microcosm cluster map. Try to avoid getting any superweapons for as long as possible.

Tying champion nebulas to AIP floors does sound interesting. One thing I've been thinking about but haven't convinced myself of: Progressive Energy Tax. That is, diminishing returns on energy collectors (rationale: It's hard to build a "Smart Grid" in space). Just for example (but the numbers are not any final proposal): After five energy collectors, the next five offer 100,000 energy. After ten energy collectors, all the remaining ones offer 50,000 energy and no more and no less. Actually proposing this idea on the mantis would require me to actually think about the power cost per cap, and various other things.

As to ship unlocks, I often find myself forced by circumstances to take different paths. In my current game against the Golemite and Entrenched Homeworlder w/Spire Corvettes as my bonus and Fireflies/Infiltrators/Zombards showing up on the AI side, I've taken Plasma Siege Starships to help with the forcefields and boost the corvettes. I'm actually considering taking Etherjet Tractors as a bonus ship type as an attempt to deal with those Zombards - thanks to their sniper immunity the best I can do is grab campers on a wormhole with tractor riot ships and kidnap 'em. I'm taking Space Tanks over personal favorites in an attempt to handle Fortresses and Golems better (don't accidentally tick off an armored golem when you only have mark two fleetships and a few mark two starships). Spire Corvettes are currently outpacing the utility of the other starships thanks to the combination of their medium hull and shields that rebuild themselves eventually even outside of supply. They actually stay alive in this Zombard-rich environment. For once, I'm dealing with barely any pesky gravity or tractor units - For Now.

For games where the AI has lots of tractor units, I find myself favoring bomber starships. Gravity: sadly somewhat short range plasma siege starships or more missile frigates. Sometimes I find a reason for Zenith and Beam starships, but not for a few patches which have affected some things. I don't have a great spread of games to draw from.

Edit: Oh for everyone talking about economy nerfs, don't forget about the -other- extreme on the balance triangle: Eight players, 1 HW each. It's at least 160 AIP to get a second world for everyone, let alone three. I'm not saying anyone is wrong or right on this, merely I haven't seen any mention at all of co-op gameplay in economy discussion and it is significantly different from a multiple hw - one player game.

[zoutzakje]

my games are always different, every single one of them. And I'm not talking about blobbing. Sometimes blobbing is suicide, but most of the time I blob like everyone else.
I'm talking about what's in my opinion the most important thing in AI war. Making choices. I keep changing my plans all the time during a game, depending on what I've scouted and what kind of ships the enemy sends to me. Or when certain minor faction events happen. Do i kill that mining golem or do I leave it alone? and what are the consequenses of both choices if there are any?
Sure most experienced people such as myself (I usually don't have a very big ego, but I really do believe I am kind of experienced ) often spend their knowledge mostly the same way, because they have found a playstyle that works. Yet a lot of things in the game can cause me to change a choice I make. Unlocking Warp jammers instead of logistics mk III because I'm not planning to destroy 6 more warp gates in an attempt to defend myself. Do I take this mk IV world with 3/3 harvesters that has another mk IV world bordering it or I take the other mk IV world next to me with 0/0 harvesters, but has nothing nasty bordering it? AI war is all about choices. And possible failure when making the wrong choice.
I don't mind blobbing often being the best way to take a planet. Most planets shouldn't be hard to take in my opinion. What should be hard is chosing which planets to take. Taking the wrong ones (taking to many, taking to few, taking ones with not enough resources, taking one that borders a particular tough world, taking one with to many exits to defend, etc) should have consequenses and would ultimately become fatal. The more factors that add depth to the question of which planet to take, which techs to unlock, etc, the more I like it. and I think AI war is doing a pretty good job with that.
I don't mind if harvester upgrades were to be removed. But what I never want to see is that harvesters get removed completely for example. That would take away one of the factors for deciding which planets to take.

I've been giving this thread some real good thought and my final conclusion is that I don't really care about blobbing, energy or a somewhat overpowered economy. Just don't take away the choices (and yes, playing without mk III harvesters is still a viable choice, even though I tend to unlock them myself. Mk III harvesters would only truly be overpowered if the game was unwinnable without them).

EDIT: Also, I don't think it's a good idea to make suggestions based on experience with Champions in a singleplayer game. Normally you're supposed to either play as you would normally, or play with just the champion in a multiplayer game. Normal+champion role was added so that people who prefer solo games can play with champions too, but it's not a good balance point. At least that's what I think, based on the little experience I have with champs.